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Data Migration Master

Data Migration Master

Unlike a lot of the big SQL databases available, FileMaker combines both the database and the GUI into a single file. This comes with its own benefits, but also has its own pitfalls too...

Creating Progress Bars in FileMaker

Creating Progress Bars in FileMaker

Surely, you’ve been there before. You’re dealing with somebody else’s software, and you’re not sure if it’s just taking a long time, or if the system froze up on you. Progress bars help take the guess-work out of the...

FileMaker Debuts Custom App Academy

FileMaker Debuts Custom App Academy

FileMaker has recently released an exciting new set of video tutorials for FileMaker users. The tutorials have options for beginners and more advanced techniques for intermediate and expert FileMaker users. You can complete...

FileMaker Training or FileMaker Coaching: Which Do You Need?

FileMaker Training or FileMaker Coaching?

You are interested in improving your FileMaker skills, but you’re not sure which makes more sense for you; FileMaker Training or FileMaker Coaching. Both have benefits that appeal to people like you, but each has differences...

Where to Find Old Versions of FileMaker

Where to Find Old Versions of FileMaker

To some of you it probably seems like FileMaker is releasing a new version of their platform bi-monthly, but it’s not quite that often. However, FileMaker has switched to an annual release schedule which does in fact cause us to have...

FileMaker Pro 16 - New Features Review

FileMaker Pro 16 - New Features Review

FileMaker Inc.’s latest offering not only looks better, but gives me some tools that I’ve wanted access to for a very long time. I have already started putting the new JSON functions to good use, & they’re proving to be very promising...

Selling FileMaker Licenses

Selling FileMaker Licenses

Did you know there are over 1,000 FileMaker license SKU's? I'm here to lead a riveting conversation about each one...hey where are you going??? O.K. fine, let's talk about the five most important questions...

New Features in FileMaker 16

New Features in FileMaker 16

It is the best time of year again; FileMaker has released FileMaker 16. The developers here at CoreSolutions are enjoying the new features and are very excited to share their reviews of FileMaker 16. In the mean time...

History of FileMaker Infographic

History of FileMaker Infographic

Because of all this positive energy, we wanted to create something that really showcased how far FileMaker has come. Please enjoy our History of FileMaker Infographic...

FileMaker Sequence Helper Solution

FileMaker Sequence Helper Solution

SEQUENCE_HELPER is a module for FileMaker Pro developers that will make it easy for you to create re-orderable lists in your solutions. Installation is a breeze. There are only 4 things that you’ll need to do to get up and running...

LiveCode for FileMaker

LiveCode for FileMaker

I recently had a chance to try out the LiveCode for FileMaker plugin, which allows you to use forms, components and scripts built in LiveCode. If (like me) you aren’t too familiar with LiveCode, you can still use the plugin...

Updating FileMaker Server Tips

FileMaker Portal Row Click Handler

I have a confession to make. When using FileMaker, sometimes I still do things the old fashioned way. I caught myself doing this the other day when I discovered a new use for an old feature...

Updating FileMaker Server Tips

Updating FileMaker Server Tips

Recently I had to reinstall an older version of FileMaker Server; the original plan was to just reinstall the version that was currently on the Server, but along the way I decided to install Server 15...

Quick Tip: FileMaker Best Practices Image

Quick Tip: FileMaker Best Practices

For today's blog we wanted to share some standard housekeeping tips for using FileMaker. This is for both new developers and for the developers who need a refresher on some best practices...

An Interview With Kevin Mallon of FileMaker Image

An Interview With Kevin Mallon of FileMaker

If you’re looking to chat with someone who’s been with FileMaker since its inception, look no further than Public Relations Manager, Kevin Mallon. Our interview...

Creating an Infinite Slider in FileMaker Image

Creating an Infinite Slider in FileMaker

This is an elegant way to display a virtually unlimited number of related images in a mobile-friendly way. I’ve dubbed it the “Infinite Slider in FileMaker” solution...

Why You Should Upgrade Your FileMaker System Image

Upgrade Your FileMaker System

Still using an earlier file format in your database? I encourage you to upgrade. At CoreSolutions, we support file formats from FileMaker 7 to 15. There are of course many reasons to upgrade and these reasons range from...

>Basics of Good Scripting Practices in FileMaker Image

Good Scripting Practices in FileMaker

FileMaker has modified writing & testing scripts. Scripting techniques might differ from developer by developer, but common principles are worth considering. Here are some good scripting practices in FileMaker...

Get on the FileMaker Training Train Image

Get on the FileMaker Training Train

I am in a unique position working for CoreSolutions. Previously, I worked for FileMaker for 12 years, so I’ve seen all sides of the importance of FileMaker training...

FileMaker Licensing for Teams is Now Available

FLT is Now Available

Now that FileMaker 15 has been released and everyone has gotten a chance to see all the new features that are available, we thought we would share a new licensing option that may have flown under your radar...

Business Benefits of FileMaker 15

Business Benefits of FileMaker 15

As you may have heard, FileMaker 15 has been released. I wanted to help you understand exactly what this release could mean for you, if you should upgrade, and let you know the exciting new features included in the release...

FileMaker 15 Has Been Released

FileMaker 15 Has Been Released

Hold on to your seats everyone, FileMaker 15 has officially been released! I know everyone has been excited to learn about the new features being rolled out and FileMaker has not disappointed. Just as FileMaker did with 14...

FileMaker 12 Support Will End September 23, 2016

FileMaker 12 Support Will End Sept. 23, 2016

Attention all FileMaker 12 users! Just to let you know, as of September 23rd of 2016, FileMaker will “no longer be available for direct sales and support including technical support, replacement media...

FileMaker E-Book – Create a Successful Custom App Image

FileMaker E-Book – Creating a Custom App

You may be planning to build a custom app or you’ve read FileMaker’s Custom Apps Success Guide: Plan and that has brought you here. This blog is for people who are looking to create a custom app...

FileMaker E-Book – Plan a Successful Custom App Image

FileMaker E-Book – Plan a Successful App

You are interested in building a custom app for your business, but you are not sure where to begin. This resource may help you out. FileMaker, a subsidiary of Apple, has released a great guide to building...

Why FileMaker Certification Matters Image

Why FileMaker Certification Matters

In FileMaker communities there is a question that seems to continuously reappear; “Is it important to become certified in FileMaker?” The answer to this question can be found...

Preparing for Your FileMaker Certification Exam Image

FileMaker Certification Exam Study Tips

Studying for the Filemaker certification exam can be a difficult and time consuming task. The exam has a large pool of possible questions that covers the entire array of products in the Filemaker platform...

Preparing for Your FileMaker Certification Exam Image

Preparing for FileMaker Certification

Starting with FileMaker Pro 7, FileMaker Inc. has offered certification programs for FileMaker Pro. Since then, it has offered certification for each successive version that it has released...

A Different Approach To Handling PDF Printing From WebDirect Image

A Different Approach To PDF Printing

After working on a solution that eventually became FileMaker WebDirect-ified, it became quite evident that we needed to find a way to do reporting from web-based clients...

The End of FileMaker 11 Support Image

The End of FileMaker 11 Support

You may be aware that as of September 25th, 2015, FileMaker will no longer be providing technical support for FileMaker 11. This doesn't mean that your FileMaker 11 system will stop functioning on the 25th but...

Still Using Bento? – Why It Might Be Time to Say Goodbye Image

Why It Might Be Time to Say Goodbye to Bento

It might be time to move on from your Bento database. Don’t get me wrong, Bento has had a great run; it was once one of the most user-friendly database apps available. Whether you were a database expert or...

FileMaker DevCon Review 2015 Image

FileMaker DevCon Review 2015

This year, the FileMaker Developers Conference was in Las Vegas, Nevada. Having never been to Las Vegas I was looking forward to seeing the city – needless to say, the view from the hotel was pretty amazing...

Creating User Records from Accounts in FileMaker Image

Creating User Records from Accounts

There are Get functions that will return almost any information you might need with regards to the FileMaker environment you’re in, however, none currently exist to give us...

Success of FileMaker Go

The Success of FileMaker Go

This has been an important month for FileMaker. Not only did FileMaker release their FileMaker 14 Platform, but in this past month the FileMaker Go app reached to tremendous milestone of...

The 11 Pre-Project Questions

The 11 Pre-Project Questions

So, you’re looking for a FileMaker Developer? Before you go ahead and choose the first FileMaker Developer you find we want to help you ensure your FileMaker developer is the right...

FileMaker 14 Cheat Sheet - A Definitive Guide to the New Features in FileMaker 14

FileMaker 14 Cheat Sheet

The FileMaker world is sure buzzing today! FileMaker 14 has been officially released! There are many resources for FileMaker info online, but here is a quick cheat sheet with some new FileMaker 14 features...

FileMaker Go - iOS Gestures Using a Slide Control

iOS Gestures Using a Slide Control

Recently, we had a client ask for the swipe-to-delete gesture that is standard on any iOS device for their FileMaker Go database. At first I thought gestures were not available in FileMaker, but...

Top 11 Misconceptions About FileMaker

Top 11 Misconceptions About FileMaker

Since FileMaker’s first days under the Claris banner up until today, they have accomplished quite a lot; they have not only become a subsidiary of the ever-powerful Apple Inc., but have...

SQL Picker Window Module For FileMaker

SQL Picker Window Module For FileMaker

This module provides a FileMaker Pro developer with the layout structure, schema and scripts needed to make a generic but portable picker window. I use this module as a way to assign a value to foreign...

Cascading Deletes are Transactional

Cascading Deletes Are Transactional

Cascading Deletes are transactional (or at least seem to be within FileMaker Pro). What I mean by this is that if a user deletes a record in your database, then that record doesn’t actually...

Insert from Device in FileMaker Go 13

Insert from Device in FileMaker Go 13

Last year I wrote a blog post about barcode scanning using FileMaker Go 12. At the time there was no way to do this directly from FileMaker, you had to call a third party application...

Dynamic Reports

Dynamic Reports

I was recently asked by a client to create a dynamic report. By dynamic, I am referring to the ability to choose different fields. At first I thought this was impossible with FileMaker, then I thought about...

Writing Plaintext from FileMaker Pro

Writing plain text from FileMaker Pro

In some cases, you might be able to get away with putting the text that is ultimately to be written to a file, within a single field in your database, and simply choosing to “Export Field Contents”...

Themes and Styles

Themes and Styles

Themes aren’t new to FileMaker 13. They were introduced in FileMaker 12, but in that release we were limited to the predefined themes that FileMaker had included. And while they were...

Allowing Users to Lock/Unlock Records

Allowing Users to Lock/Unlock Records

Under certain circumstances, the users of your database system might want records to be locked, in order to prevent further modifications to occur. One common example would be after an order...

Encrypting Files in FileMaker 13

Encrypting Files in FileMaker 13

If you are creating a database, especially for your business, then you probably have sensitive data that you need to store in it. It doesn’t matter if it’s client information, or patient data, or financial information...

Object Visibility in FileMaker 13

FileMaker 13 – Object Visibility

As with every new release of FileMaker products, we as developers have some new tools up our sleeves to work with. One of the new features that I think I’ll find I’m going to be...

Upload to FileMaker Server from FileMaker Pro 13

Upload to FileMaker Server From FM Pro 13

The FileMaker family just got a bit bigger. As of 9:00 am this morning, the new versions of almost all products in the FileMaker software suite became available. There are many...

13 REasons to be Excited for FileMaker 13

13 Reasons To Be Excited for FileMaker 13

Some say that 13 is an unlucky number. Many cultures, builders and athletes will stay away from the number 13. Mats Sundin, Dan Marino and Don Maynard all wore number 13...

The FileMaker 13 Platform

The FileMaker 13 Platform

I’m sure you know by now that the latest and greatest release of our favourite database ‘FileMaker’ was released yesterday. While every new release of FileMaker brings with it...

Vlaue Lists with Unstored Calculations

Value Lists with Unstored Calculations

If you’ve ever tried to create a value list based on an unstored calculation, you’ve probably come across this error: Normally this means using workarounds to create the value...

Adding FileMaker to an Oracle Databse

Adding FileMaker to Oracle Database

FileMaker’s External SQL Sources allows a database created in FileMaker to display and manipulate data from any ODBC compliant data source. All FileMaker needs is a system DSN...

Dynamic Value Lists Filters

Dynamic Value List Filters

With the introduction of the function ExecuteSQL in Filemaker 12, I find it now fairly easy to have dynamic value lists. An instance this may become useful is if you change...

For Loops in FileMaker

“For Loops” in FileMaker

First of all, props go out to Jeremy Bante for this one. I’ve spent some time recently going through some of the solutions on ModularFileMaker.org. While I’ve found a lot of...

Simple Boolean Toggle

Simple Boolean Toggle

It’s pretty common in programming to need to toggle between 2 states (boolean). FileMaker Pro however, doesn’t provide a boolean field, nor does it provide a function that...

Update: Gantt Charts in FileMaker

Update: Gantt Charts In FileMaker

Nearly 3 years ago, Kevin McGee wrote a blog post entitled How to: Gantt Charts in FileMaker. Since then, we’ve had a lot of interest in native Filemaker Gantt charts. Today...

Annually Resetting Serial Numbers

Annually Resetting Serial Numbers

“What exactly is the best way to generate serial numbers that will reset themselves every year?”. My approach is a rather simple one, requiring no scripting at all, and it shouldn’t...

Barcode Scanning in FileMaker Go

Barcode Scanning in FileMaker Go

Recently I’ve been doing some research into doing barcode scanning in FileMaker Go. While this is something that isn’t possible natively with FileMaker, there are companies that have...

Shortcuts Directly to Your Database

Shortcuts Directly to Your Database

If you use a FileMaker database (or even multiple FileMaker databases) on a regular basis, then chances are you typically open up FileMaker Pro first, and from there either pick the...

Getting a list of Field Names

Getting a list of Field Names

Recently, I wanted to pull a list of field names from a table to display to the user. The first place I looked was the Design functions. If you haven’t had a look at these, I’d suggest...

Quick Charting in FileMaker 12

Quick Charting in FileMaker 12

We’ve done a few posts in the past on the charting functionality in FileMaker Pro, but one of the new features that they’ve added in FileMaker 12 that’s kind of cool is Quick Charting. Quick...

Random Generator

Random Generator

I recently designed a small database for an office event. The event required 5 teams, and I wanted the teams to be randomly chosen. To perform a simple random selection I had a “Go To...

ExecuteSQL in FileMaker 12

ExecuteSQL in Filemaker 12

Early last year, I wrote an article on executing SQL queries in FileMaker. As I mentioned in the article, with FileMaker Pro 11 and earlier this is possible, but can only be done with the aid...

Storing Files and Media Inside FM12

Storing Files and Media Inside FM 12

One of the principle features of FileMaker Pro 12 is how container fields have been re-engineered, permitting new features when storing files or media inside them. Previous versions of FileMaker...

Running SQL Queries in FileMaker

Running SQL Queries in FileMaker

I’ve spent the last several years working on solutions using a variety of databases – primarily FileMaker, but I’ve also used MySql, SQL Server and even Oracle a time or two. One of the things I like...

Three Cool Interface Tricks

Three Cool Interface Tricks

Back in the “day”, portals used to have one fill colour. Since FileMaker Pro 6 we’ve been able to alternate the colour of the portal rows making them easier to read. On a recent project I utilized...

FileMaker Database Hosting Options

FileMaker Database Hosting Options

One of the questions I often get asked is “who are you and how did you get in my house?” but after that it tends to be whether or not we offer FileMaker hosting. The answer is no but I can typically...

Creative Charting in FileMaker

Creative Charting in FileMaker

When you think of charts in FileMaker, you’re probably thinking of plain, simple charts. Charts can be manipulated to make an assortment of things. Here are a few examples. You can display a hybrid...

Custom Menus and the Status Toolbar

Custom Menus and the Status Toolbar

Following up on last week’s CoreFM blog, one of the interesting things about FileMaker® Pro’s Status toolbar is that you can actually override the behavior of some of its buttons by using custom menus...

A Handy Way To Format Calculations

A Handy Way To Format Calculations

Have you ever created a FileMaker calculation that was a little complicated but it made sense at the time? And a few months later you look at that calculation again and you can’t figure it out? I have...

Google Analytics in FileMaker

Google Analytics in FileMaker

In today’s webinar, I discussed some of the advantages of bringing data from Google Analytics into FileMaker Pro. I also illustrated how simple it can be to accomplish. In order to make this task even...

Creating PDFs in FileMaker Go

Creating PDFs in FileMaker Go

I’ve had a chance to use FileMaker Go for a couple of months now, and I’ve been impressed with the amount of functionality they’ve managed to pack into a portable application – it’s a big...

How to: Gantt Charts in FileMaker

How to: Gantt Charts in FileMaker

Gantt charts are (in my opinion) the best tool to help keep track of project activities and hours. Even with all the tools and built-in charts that FileMaker has for us, there will still be times where...

Lost in Calculation

Lost in Calculation

We all know that some things can get lost in translation from one language to another. Something similar can happen when you try to translate an idea from your native tongue...

The Importance of Naming Conventions

The Importance of Naming Conventions

Since 1999 CoreSolutions has published FileMaker Naming Standards. These standards are developed in an effort to share the efficiencies we’ve realized over the years by using a cohesive set of naming...

Virtually FileMaker Server

Virtual FileMaker Server

FileMaker Inc. doesn’t make a very big deal about it, but for years FileMaker Server has played nice in Virtual Environments. A Virtual Environment uses physical hardware and software to allow...

Integrating Google Maps API

Integrating the Google Maps API

Web Viewers have been available in FileMaker since version 8.5, providing a quick option for adding a custom map into your projects by using the Web Viewer Setup tool. You can set the parameters for...

Validating Email Addresses with The Use of Auto-Enter Calculations

Validate Email Addresses With Auto-Enter

Typos, and Fat-Fingering can happen to any one of us, but if they happen in your database, they will dramatically reduce the integrity of your data. This article illustrates an attempt at trying to...

Creating PDF files from FileMaker

Creating PDF files from FileMaker

Printing into a PDF document has long been an option for Mac OS X users, while Windows users could utilize third-party applications to redirect printing from the printer to a PDF file...