Copy All Records – A Real Bonus

Sometimes, discovering a simple technique in Filemaker makes me wonder how I’ve lived without it until now.  The “Copy All Records” script step is one that I’ve never used… until now.  Now that I know what it does, it’ll quickly become a favourite.

In a Found Set, Copy All Records does just that, i.e. copies the contents of all records in the Found Set into the clipboard – or at least the contents of all fields on the currently displayed layout.  So if, before doing Copy All Records, you go to a layout on which you have only the primary key field displayed, doing Copy All Records copies just the keys of the records in the current Found Set.  And these keys are nicely formatted as a return-separated list.

This list can then be pasted into, say, a global field, which you can then use as a multi-key in a self-join relationship.   You may, for example, want to use this later on to retrive the Found Set that you were working on earlier, by using a GTRR based on the global multi-key.

Very tidy and efficient.

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