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A little-known feature of value lists is that you can select more than one value at a time and save those values in a single field in return-delimited format (values are separated by return characters). A checkbox value list is designed to work this way, but what about pop-up menus, drop-down lists and radio buttons? Even if they don’t appear to, these types of value lists will allow more than one value to be selected.
Pop-up Menu and Radio Buttons
Clicking on more than one item in a pop-up menu, or a radio button field, simply changes your selection to that new value. Holding the shift key while you click allows you to select multiple values. Not only that, if you look at the field contents without a value list, you’ll see that the values are entered in the order selected. In figure 1, items were clicked from the bottom to the top of the list.
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Drop-Down Lists
If you use the shift key in a drop-down list and click the top value, then shift-click the bottom value, you’ll notice that all the values between those two are also selected.
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Holding down the control/command key (Windows/Mac respectively) allows you to select only the values you click on. Also, tabbing or clicking out of the field does not save your selection; you’ll have to hit the enter key to save.
Cool
It’s common to have a value list showing both an ID and a Name. A new feature of FMP 8.x is that it can show the Name only and hide the ID. The tips above also work with these types of value lists.
