Hi,
I'm a new Sesame user with a basic question. We use Sesame for invoicing but I'd like to add a little more functionality to make the process efficient. We sell products that depend, in order of importance, upon a Manufacturer, then Model, then Size, to finally display the appropriate product. How can I populate each combo box to display the appropriate data as the user moves through them? My goal is to have a subform displaying the data in Retrieve mode, with command buttons to Update or Add.

I saw one older example related to this in the Programming Section (I can't post the link) but I'm not getting the expected results.

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

Check XLookupAll().  It returns all matches as a semi-colon delimited string, i.e., essentially:

Manufacturer = "ABC-Company"
AllModels = xlookupall(Manufacturer, "Products" [etc])

AllModels will come back as "ABC123;ABC345;ABC456"

Then the combo box options can be populated using that string.

I think which approach to use would depend on how many items there are in each category and how often the items change. Either way, your PopulateListElement code would be used whether it is a static list or whether the list was obtained by xlookupall.

Also, depending on the product, a static list may be the best approach for one box (e.g., Size) and xlookup might be best for another, e.g., Model [style number] if the product is clothing.

Thanks for the response.

The Cow wrote on Mar 8^th, 2012 at 10:03pm:


You're exactly right; I'd like to make combo box A's result determine that only valid results are displayed in combo box B.  I'd use the method you have shown as an example if it were feasible, but we sell concealed carry holsters that are sized to properly fit any handgun out here. I'm not sure exactly how many there are, but it's probably a list of many thousands. Hard-coding those choices by hand would be a significant chore. That's why I'd like to have the application execute normally in Retrieve mode, with Update/Add buttons so that the database grows as needed.

SmartCarry wrote on Mar 23^rd, 2012 at 5:41pm:



You'll have to write On Exit or On Change for each combo box field that will automatically populate the next field or On Entry code for the target field.  (Realistically, I don't see On Entry code as viable, since users would be confused about the blank field that suddenly gets populated after they tab.)

There is one other issue--are there certain combinations that are much more common? Users hate having to scroll through a long list of "once in a blue moon" items for something they use constantly.  For example, on "Your Country" lists, why do web designers in the U.S. put the list completely alphabetically when 95%+ of the people will be from the U.S. and they probably won't get one 'Albania' per year?