If you are constantly using the zoom buttons to change your database view, do not click the reverse zoom buttons several times to go back to 100% (default) view.

All you have to do is click the numbered button on the bottom-left of the screen, wether it says 25, 150, or whatever. It will bring your zoom level back to 100% with one button click.

If for some reason you ever want to insert the current date or the current time into a FileMaker database, in either layout or browse mode, instead of manually typing it out all you have to do is press Control + Dash for the date and Control and Semi-Colon for the current time.

It is a hard coded value and won’t update as the date and time changes, so it can be useful for storing dates of events to look back on for example.

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Have you ever been deleting a few records in a FileMaker database and got annoyed but constantly clicking Delete on the confirmation dialog?

Well if you are sure you want to delete a record and don’t want the confirmation, you can just hold down the Shift key (Option key on Mac) when clicking delete and hey presto!  No confirmation, the record will be deleted instantly.

But be careful, ‘With great power comes great responsibility!’

When you are in browse mode looking at a record and want to copy the data to another application, what would you do? Export it ? No need!

If you just select Copy from the edit menu or press Ctrl + C (Command + C on Mac) you will have the data from the current record (that is on the current layout) on the clipboard, ready to paste into another application in tab delimited format. So if you paste it into an Excel document for example, it will separate into columns.

If you don’t just want the current record but you want the entire found set, then all you have to do is hold down the Shift key (Option key on Mac) whilst selecting copy and instead of the current record, the data from the whole current set will now be copied to the clipboard.

Welcome to FileMaker Tips!

This is going to be a place where I will keep track of any useful FileMaker hints, tips and tricks, including script snippets, custom functions and anything else I can find or think of!

I hope this site become a useful resource!