Filemaker pro 14 keyboard shortcuts free
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Filemaker pro 14 keyboard shortcuts free
Disable Script Step shortcut does not work on Windows.
We counted the total mac shortcuts available in FileMaker Pro, and there are around give or take a few, that's quite a lot. Below we have two videos. To set the scene, we have a layout with some fields and labels, and a couple of other objects. The goal is to properly align everything nicely. In the first video we use no keyboard shortcuts - just the inspector and contextual menus.
In the second video we use exclusively keyboard shortcuts. We display a timer in both videos. In the second video we also show on-screen the keyboard shortcuts used. Without using shortcuts we took 69 seconds, and using shortcuts the same actions took 45 seconds - a saving of 24 seconds. This is just a one minute example. Now that's an extreme example - you would have to be working exclusively in layout mode and doing a lot of manipulation to see that improvement, but this is a good illustration of how much time can be saved in increments over the course of a single day!
More to the point, I think the most important area you can learn and use shortcuts is when in layout mode.
So much of layout development is making minor adjustments and then previewing your work in browse mode. The quicker you can do your refinements, the more previewing you can get done in the same amount of time. You'll quickly find yourself becoming a better designer as a result. And one final thing on the benefits. By using shortcuts you're not just getting faster at doing what you do.
You will actually end up changing the way you develop. There's a tendency in developers to build something first, and refine or pretty it up later because that part of the task takes longer and is more tedious. By utilising extra shortcuts you'll find yourself doing refinements along the way rather than at the end where they can often be forgotten about.
For the keen eye who knows their shortcuts you may have noticed in the second video a few shortcuts you may not find in the standard set that comes with FileMaker. These are custom shortcuts we have added into FileMaker to extend our full set, and add even more functionality and efficiency to development.
Some extra ones in the video were:. In FileMaker you can actually add even more shortcuts to fill in the gaps where shortcuts are missing. There are a couple of ways you can do this. For this article, you'll find our method in the example file that you can download below. Download the example file CustomShortcuts. The FileMaker preferences file also known as the plist file , is where all settings and defaults for the FileMaker program are kept. We can add custom shortcuts to this file.
At this point because we're getting into discussing how to add custom shortcuts, we must stress that the example file is for mac users only. To this point I haven't found a good way to add custom shortcuts for FileMaker on windows.
If you have a good method for doing this please get in touch and we'll update the article. We won't go into too much detail about the specifics around building your own shortcuts because this is all covered with instruction in the example file. However to touch briefly on what is involved, let's look at some sample code:. This code is for a handful of custom shortcuts. This looks very much like XML.
The key is the shortcut name case sensitive and must exactly match the menu command in FileMaker. The string value is the shortcut representation. The code uses some special symbols to represent modifier keys:.
Note some shortcuts require special symbols to represent them, such as the arrow keys, backspace, delete key etc. We list these special characters in the example file. The code is pasted into your FileMaker preferences file. After restarting FileMaker you should be able to use these. Here is an example of some custom shortcuts for layout object manipulation:. The example file has 46 new custom shortcuts. All of them you'll find quite intuitive and similar to other existing keyboard shortcuts in the same area of FileMaker.
For example a lot of the shortcuts in the "Manage.. The custom shortcuts continue this trend so you can easily learn them:. The shortcuts you add directly into your plist file will appear here, and vice versa. We prefer modifying the plist because it allows you to easily keep your custom shortcuts, and transfer them to different computers if you need to. However this is a nice way to view all of the ones you have defined or make any minor refinements.
Of the 46 custom shortcuts we use, there are a few standouts. These are ones either used most frequently, or quite unusual or interesting ways you can use shortcuts in FileMaker, we'll go through a few here. FileMaker doesn't provide shortcuts to toggle the data viewer or script debugger, so why not add your own.
These 2 tools are used so often in development it would be criminal not to use a shortcut! Let's just add our own. These are so critical. Completing the full set of layout manipulation shortcuts lets you never have to reach for the menus again. The best thing about these is they're intuitive and easy to learn if you already use the existing shortcuts e.
Quite often when developing you need to build custom menus for certain layouts. While the users might require these, they can be incredibly frustrating for a developer especially when common commands might be missing from them. Often you just want to revert to the standard menu set - so why not bind a key to the standard menus? This lets you quickly an easily change the menu set no matter where you are. The option to toggle sample data in layout mode is a really useful tool but is often overlooked because it is hidden away in the menus.
Through using a shortcut key you can make this accessible and easy to toggle and add this valuable feature to your toolkit. Now for some cool stuff. In FileMaker there are certain menu commands that essentially do a similar thing, yet at any given point in time only one of them is able to be used.
There are 8 different layout objects for which there is a setup dialog, however when working in layout mode you can only select one of these objects at a time for editing in the setup dialog. This allows us to define the exact same shortcut for every single one. THey will never end up in conflict because only one will ever be enabled at any given time.
How cool is that. Each database you create with FileMaker Pro is stored as a file on your hard drive—just like your documents and spreadsheets. This file contains all the information about how the database is structured, plus all the information stored inside it, which means you can open, close, copy, or back up a database as you would any other file.
This section explains those tasks in detail, along with some quirks that are particular to FileMaker files. In Browse mode top , you can click the New Record button and then start entering information.
Find mode second from top lets you look for records with all the tools you need to create new Find requests or to select a recent or Saved Find. And if you inspect a report by clicking the Preview button before you print it third from top , you get tools for saving the report as a PDF, exporting the data to Excel, and plain old printing. Layout mode lets you change the appearance of your database with tools for text, field, and object formatting bottom.
Select the file you want to work with and then click Open. If you prefer, you can find the file by using Windows Explorer Windows or the Finder Mac and then double-clicking its icon. When you open a database, you see one or more windows on your screen. If you open the People database that you downloaded at the beginning of this chapter, you see one database window.
If your database has only one open window, the Close Window command closes the whole database. But you can open more than one window into a single database Viewing a Table , and if you do, you need to close each window individually to close the file. Top: The Launch Center gives you quick access to frequently used files. To close all the windows in all the databases you currently have open, simply press Alt Windows or Option Mac and then click the File menu.
On a Mac, the Close command is replaced by Close All. Choose it, and FileMaker closes all its windows, which also saves and closes all your open databases. Whether your database contains information about individual people, eBay auctions, products you sell, student grades, or whatever, FileMaker always thinks of that information in individual chunks called records.
Each record contains everything the database knows about that person, auction, product, or student. For example, each person in a database of magazine subscribers gets her own record.
For instance, in your saltshaker collection database, you may not know the year a particular shaker was manufactured, so you can leave that field blank. To enter information in any field in a record, just click it and then type. What to type? As Figure shows, most fields in this database have a label at left indicating the type of information the field contains. A label is just a bit of text that appears near a field. See the box on The Many Faces of a Field for more on recognizing fields and labels.
When you click in a field, dotted borders indicate the fields you can edit. Fields always appear inside the content area, but other than that, they can have amazing variety. You can let your creative urges go wild.
A field can have a label next to, below, above—even inside—where you enter data, or no label at all. You can color in a field with a solid color, a gradient, or a picture. You can make borders thick or thin. You can even give them rounded corners, so rounded that they look like little pills. In fact, if mystery is your thing, then you can make your field invisible—no label, no border, and no color. See Chapter 4 for more detail on customizing and beautifying the fields in your database.
Efficient data entry means typing something in a field and then moving right along to the next field. You can use the mouse to click the next field, but using the Tab key is faster:. Press the Tab key to move to the next field.
Press Shift-Tab to move to the previous field. Who decides which field is next or previous? You do. When you design a database, you get to set the tab order.
For example, when people move, you can change their address data. Just click in the field to be updated, select the data, and start typing the new information. Just revert the record, and you can be confident that whatever you did has been forgotten. One of the easiest ways to commit a record is to simply click some empty space not in a field in the content area. FileMaker dutifully saves the record for you. If you want a little more control, visit Layout Setup to learn how you can set FileMaker to ask for confirmation before committing a record.
This process is called committing the record. In that respect, a FileMaker record is like a cardboard file folder—you have to open it before you can change something inside it. You can be in only one record at any given moment, and that record is said to be active. Believe it or not, getting this terminology straight will make things easier later on. While no two people are alike, it may not always seem that way from their contact information. For instance, if you want to include three people from the same household in your database, the data in the Address, City, State, Zip, and probably Last Name fields will all be the same for each person.
FileMaker copies everything from the first record into a new one for you. FileMaker Pro gives you three commands that let you delete one record, a group of records, or even all the records in your database. Consider saving a backup copy of your file first Saving a Copy of Your Database.
One record. Multiple records. FileMaker has a helpful command that trashes any group of records of your choosing. Before you use this command, you have to tell FileMaker which records to delete. You do that with the Find command Finding Records. Again, FileMaker gives you a chance to change your mind with a message box that tells you how many records you have in your found set and asks you to click either the Delete All or the Cancel button. All records.
In some cases, you may want to delete all the records in a database. Maybe a colleague wants an empty copy of your database for his own use. But if you just want an empty copy of your database, cloning is easier; see Saving a Clone of Your Database. Once you get used to deleting records, you may get tired of FileMaker nagging you about being sure you want to delete. FileMaker fields can hold a lot of text. To see for yourself, in the People database, click in the Notes field.
When you do, a scroll bar appears at the right side of the field. If you type lots of notes, then you can scroll through them. When you design a database, you get to decide which fields have scroll bars, as discussed on Scroll Bars.
As you type, FileMaker just makes the field grow to hold whatever you type. When you leave the field, it shrinks back to its normal size, hiding anything that goes outside the edges.
You can enter text into a field in all the usual ways, like typing on your keyboard or pasting text you copied from another field or another program. That second scroll bar you see right next to the Notes field lets you see if there are lots of notes for a record. But what about Duplicate Record? Fortunately, you can add the Duplicate button to your toolbar. The top section of the dialog box shows all the buttons you can add to the toolbar. On a Mac, the middle section gives you a pristine copy of the default toolbar that you can drag into place to put things back to normal.
FileMaker is just trying to keep you informed so you can make good choices. So you sometimes see dialog boxes that FileMaker calls error messages. Unlike the Delete warning, you only get once choice: to click OK. Just remember that you must be viewing an actual record and have your cursor in a field before you can start typing.
And take that book off your keyboard, eh? In this dialog box, FileMaker asks you to tell it where to put all that data your wpm typing power is delivering. Until you click in a field, your information has nowhere to go. But first, you need to learn how to navigate through the records in the database. The Status toolbar gives you several tools that help you get where you need to go. As you go through this section on navigating, it helps to have a database open in front of you so you can follow along and try some of these techniques.
In the People database, or indeed any FileMaker database, you can add as many records as you want. To tell FileMaker which record you want to look at, you have three options:. The arrow buttons let you flip from record to record one at a time. Pretend your database is a number line, and each record is numbered. To get to the next record, click the right arrow. To go back, click the left arrow. In addition to displaying the controls for switching records, the Status toolbar indicates where you are in the database.
And the pie chart tool tells you that your current found set is showing 8 of the 27 total records in the database. The slider is kind of a turbocharged version of the arrow buttons. Instead of clicking once for each record, you can advance through a bunch of records by dragging the slider. The slider is most handy when you want to get to the beginning or the end of a database. In that case, just drag the slider as far as it will go in either direction.
The Current Record indicator above the slider serves two purposes. Second, if you know which record you want to be on, then you can simply type the record number to jump to it. Beside the Current Record, the Found Set display shows you how many records you have in your database. All navigation methods let you move within what FileMaker calls a found set , which lets you look at a specific set of records at one time.
Learn more about finds and found sets on Advanced Find Techniques. FileMaker also has a few keyboard shortcuts to make record navigation painless. Spending a little time getting used to using these keystrokes saves you hours of time down the road:. As you create the records in your database, FileMaker numbers each new record as you add it—the record number that appears next to the arrow buttons see Figure I put his contact information in record For instance, if you delete the first record in a database, every record below it moves up one slot.
Now, what used to be record 2 becomes record 1, what used to be 3 is now 2, and so on. Daniel may have his business sold out from under him before you find his record that way. If you want to assign every record its own number, and have that number stay with the record forever, then you want serial numbers.
To activate the Current Record indicator without using the mouse, press Esc. Now type a record number and then press Enter to go to that record. To insert a new line in FileMaker, press Return. Press and hold it while you press the Enter key to commit the record. Apple laptops and compact keyboards have a single Return key. On these devices, hold the fn key while pressing Return.
Pressing Tab moves you from one field to another. For instance, FileMaker lets you decide if Enter—not Tab—should move from field to field. You need to tell FileMaker to pull up the record for you. For example, you have a season ticket holder whose last name is Adama, who just renewed his subscription for a year. If you have hundreds of records in your People database, it could take ages to find the one you want by clicking the arrow buttons.
If you downloaded the example file discussed on Content Area , you can open it and try out Find mode now. To make a request, enter enough information to tell FileMaker what you want. It will show you records that have the same information you entered, much like searches you conduct using other programs, like a Google or Bing search.
In the sample database CH01 People. In the Last Name field, type Adama. This part works just as in Browse mode: Click the field and then type. In the Status toolbar, click Perform Find. Because Find mode looks so much like Browse mode, FileMaker gives you lots of feedback about the mode change.
The Status toolbar now has a Perform Find button, and even better, a Saved Finds tool that lets you store frequently used find criteria. You can see how many records you found by looking at the count in the Status toolbar, as shown in Figure After a find, the Status toolbar shows how many records match your request. Here, FileMaker found two records with the last name Adama. FileMaker swaps your found set and shows you the other records in your database.
If you do, then you get an empty request and you have to start all over again. Now you can make any necessary modifications and perform the find again.
In the previous find examples, you had FileMaker search for records by telling it what to look for. Say you need a list of everybody in the People file who lives in Caprica City. The field is set to automatically select all its data when you click in it, but if you accidentally double-click you could deselect the data instead.
From the shortcut menu that pops up, select Find Matching Records see Figure FileMaker shows you a found set of all your sci-fi contacts. FileMaker displays a found set of records that contain your search term in any visible field. Click the magnifying glass in the Quick Find box for a list of recent finds.
Choose one to perform that find again. Each time you perform a Find, FileMaker searches all your records. See Constraining and Extending the Found Set to learn how. There are three main types of errors. Read on to see why each one occurs and what you need to do to correct the error.
Click the Cancel button to return to Browse mode, or Modify Find to try again. If you click Modify Find, you end up back in Find mode, with your original search terms showing so you can check your typing or enter new search terms. Right-click the selection and then, from the shortcut menu, choose Find Matching Records. FileMaker finds blank fields, and now you can start entering the missing data in those records.
Chapter 2 gives you lots more detail on special search symbols and other tricky finds. You can make quite a bit of progress entering records and never realize your mistake. If you create more than 10 find requests while in Find mode, then FileMaker shows the message in Figure Just click Yes and keep up the good work. But if you just forgot to switch back to Browse mode, this warning can save you more lost keystrokes.
When FileMaker looks for records, it expects them to match your find request exactly. Finding the right records can be a real balancing act. Be too specific and you may not find anything at all; be too vague and you find more than you can handle. The next chapter explains how FileMaker decides when a match is good enough, and how you can change its decision-making process. Since FileMaker matches field values flexibly, you can often save typing and improve accuracy by being brief.
You can sort the records in any order you want, as often as you want. For example, if you need a short-term loan, you might sort your contacts by annual income.
FileMaker still shows the same found set of contacts, but with Uncle Moneybags at the very top of the list. You see the Sort Records dialog box shown in Figure , with all available fields listed on the left. You tell FileMaker how to sort by moving a field to the list on the right. FileMaker starts out by listing the fields shown on the Current Layout. Instead of Current Layout, that option starts with Current Table. Learn more about tables in Chapter 6. You pick the fields you want to sort by and the order in which they should be sorted and then click Sort.
In the Status toolbar, click Sort. The Sort Records dialog box Figure appears. From the list on the left, select the Last Name field and then click Move. Or double-click the field name. But if you want something new, just click Clear All and then start with a clean slate. Is it completely random? Remain calm. Once you sort the records, they stay in that order until you sort again or explicitly unsort them.
In the Sort dialog box, use the Unsort button. Yes, that can be disorienting. The record lands in a different place in the list depending on how your data is sorted. But if you have a multisort by Last Name and then by First Name, then the duplicate record appears right after the original.
You can avoid this confusion by unsorting your list before you create new records. My record was number 20 in the sort order, but as soon as I finished editing it, the record jumped to record number 1. What the heck just happened? If you tell FileMaker to sort the records by Last Name and then edit the last name data in one of your records, FileMaker dutifully puts the edited record into its new position in the sort order when you commit the new record.
Each sort field has an order associated with it. The Descending option is the reverse largest to smallest or Z to A.
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