User manual

Table Of Contents
Chapter 3 | Designing and creating solutions 48
Creating calculation fields
1. In Layout mode, click .
2. In the Field Picker dialog box, click New Field and type a name for the calculation field.
3. Click the field type and choose Calculation.
4. In the Specify Calculation dialog box, if necessary, for Evaluate this calculation from the
context of, choose a table from the list.
Setting the context for a calculation is only necessary when you’re creating a calculation field in
a source table that has two or more occurrences in the relationships graph. The source table is
the table defined in the Tables tab of the Manage Database dialog box. The choice you make
may affect the calculation results, particularly if your calculation will include fields in related tables.
5. Build a formula for your calculation.
In the calculation pane, click where you want the item to appear, then do the following. You can
also type the formula into the box.
Procedures for working with formulas and a reference to all FileMaker Pro functions (organized
alphabetically or by category) are available in Help.
6. Select calculation options for the field.
To add a Do this
Reference to a field In the fields pane, double-click a field name.
To display field names from another table, choose a table from the table list.
Mathematical or text operator In the list to the right of the calculation pane, click an operator. (Quotation
marks and parentheses are copied to the formula as a pair, with the insertion
point blinking in the middle).
Comparison or logical operator,
or an exponent
For Operators, choose an operator from the list.
Constant value Type the value.
A constant can be text, number, date, or time. Use date constants with the
functions Date and GetAsDate, time constants with the functions Time and
GetAsTime, and timestamp constants with the functions Timestamp and
GetAsTimestamp.
Function In the functions pane, double-click a function (a predefined, named formula
that performs a specific calculation and returns a single, specific value). In the
calculation pane, replace the placeholder parameter with a value or
expression.