FileMaker Pro Session 1 – Field Types
Text fields
These are the most commonly used. They store text data — — essentially any combination of letters, numbers, foreign characters, and symbols that you can type with your keyboard. Text fields usually contain names, addresses, and companies. For example: "Steve" "Jobs" "Pixar Inc." "Point Richmond" "90210".
Number fields
These hold numerical values that a database would add, subtract, multiply, and divide (not zip codes or telephone numbers.) A good way to make the distinction between what goes in a text field and what goes in a number field is to ask yourself, "Will I add, subtract, multiply, or divide this data?" If you will, then it probably belongs in a number field.
Exception: zip code should be a text if you use a leading zero zip code such as 01987; a number field will drop the leading zero to 1987.
Date fields
These record the day, month, and year events happen or how long something took. Filemaker prefers the full year format such as October 11, 2004 - 8/11/2004 to avoid Y2K issues'
Time fields
These record the exact time of day events happen or how long something took. They may be used in calculations.
Container fields
These hold items such as scanned images, imported clip art , or graphics created with drawing programs. They also hold any sound (such as recorded messages or oral notes) or QuickTime movies.
Global fields
Data entered for any one record is constant on all records.
Calculation fields
Your database fills these in for you. They use multiple number, text, time, and date fields.
Summary fields
Your database fills these in for you. These fields total, average, etc. for multiple records.
In Filemaker 7
| Text |
Up to approximately 2 GB of letters, symbols, and/or numbers used as text per field repetition, limited by available RAM and disk space. Indexes nominally based on the first 100 characters of each word or value. Text fields may contain carriage returns. |
| Number |
Supports values up to 800 digits or other characters, and the negative values of the same range. Index is based on the first 400 significant digits. Number fields can also contain Boolean values, to indicate, for example, true, false, yes, and no. Number fields can't contain carriage returns. |
| Date |
Dates only. Gregorian calendar with a range of 1/1/0001...12/31/4000. Month, day, and year order is based on system settings when the file is created. |
| Time |
Times only. A time field can contain the hours, minutes, and seconds portion of a time. |
| Timestamp |
Dates and times together to reference a fixed point in calendar time. For example, 10/25/2003 2:39:46 AM. |
| Container |
A picture, file (such as a Microsoft Word or Excel file), PDF, multimedia file, or OLE object (Windows) of up to 4 GB per field. You can reference container fields in calculations and summary fields. You can't find or sort records based on container fields, but you can define text fields to describe or identify them. Then, you can find or sort records based on the description or identifying number in the text field. |
| Calculation |
The result of a calculation formula that uses field values from the current record or related records. The result can be one of these types of data: text, number, date, time, timestamp, or container. |
| Summary |
A value that's produced by summarizing field values from more than one record in the same table. |
