Functions Reference

140 FileMaker Functions Reference
Lookup
Format
Lookup(sourceField{;failExpression})
Parameters
sourceField - the field from which the lookup value is taken.
failExpression - any expression.
Parameters in curly braces { } are optional.
Data type returned
text, number, date, time, timestamp, container
Description
Returns the contents of sourceField, using the relationships in the relationships graph.
The result of the optional failExpression will be returned if the lookup fails. In order
for this function to access the contents of the source field, the tables containing the source
field and calculation field need to be related. Calculations using the Lookup function won’t
be forced to be unstored calculations.
Example
There are two tables, People and Company, in a database file containing the data shown
below.
People table
Company table
The People and Company tables are related using the number field CompanyID. The
calculation CompanyName = Lookup(Company::CompanyName;“Not found”)
defined in the People table will return Apple for the first record
, FileMaker for the second
record and Not found for the third record.
CompanyID Employee
100 John Smith
200 Peter Wong
300 Sally Anderson
CompanyID CompanyName Code
100 Apple 91234
100 Apple 82345
200 FileMaker 95054