The Support Group Blog

Geolocation with FileMaker Go

UPDATE 4:

Geolocation is now natively supported in FileMaker Go 12 with the new mobile functions Location()and LocationValues().  Yay! For FileMaker Go 11, read on…

Elizabeth in San Francisco is one of many to ask this interesting FileMaker Go question:

Is there any way to get the latitude and longitude of the phone in FileMaker Go and store them in a database?

My first reaction was “unfortunately, no.”  FileMaker Go can’t access the GPS features of the iPhone, and since we can’t use plug-ins with Go, there’s no opportunity to add that feature.  But never say never, right?

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FileMaker into iCal (Without Plugins)

Al asks:

Any hints on how to get appointments into iCal or Google calendars easily - without plug-ins? Mac would be fine, as I want this available on iPhone in the end.

Easy?  Maybe…  it depends on what you want to be able to do with it once it’s in iCal.

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Creating Calendars with Portal Filters in FileMaker Pro

Have you ever wanted to display event records in a calendar format?  Of course you have!  And FileMaker Pro 11 makes this so much easier with filtered portals.

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Dynamically naming a variable in FileMaker Pro

One of the things I find I need to do frequently is create a variable using a calculated name.  For example, I can use the FieldNames function to get the list of fields on a layout. I might want to then declare a number of variables that have the same names as the fields, and then populate them with those fields’ values.  Later, I can loop through the fields again, perhaps updating them with a Set Field By Name step, and reference the variable with the similar name.

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Highlight the Active Field with Conditional Formatting

This is one of my favorite tips, which we first published in August 2007 when conditional formatting was introduced in FileMaker Pro 9.  A not-uncommon request we’ve received over the years is to highlight the current field with something more than slightly darker field borders.  Conditional formatting seems the perfect answer: there must be a way to change a field’s background fill from its default to another color on entering the field, right? Turns out… no.  You cannot use conditional formatting to change a field’s fill color on entering it.  It’s just not possible.  Never.  Conditional formatting does not work in any way whatsoever while focus is in the field in question. 

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Finding and Sorting Your Data

Tuesday, February 9, 2010, Chad Novotny presented Finding and Sorting Your Data, a webinar hosted by FileMaker, Inc.  You can download the video (which requires the WebEx WRF Player), as well as the sample FileMaker file used in the presentation. This file is best used with FileMaker Pro 10 or later. Not all aspects of the file will work in earlier versions of FileMaker Pro. We hope you find this webinar informative and useful.

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