I am using filemaker as a clinical laboratory database. My medical director wants me to design a lab report page that shows cumulative data in a table form that is similar to what is created in an excel spread sheet.

For example, he wants to have column headings (horizontal) that shows dates that the patient was tested with vertical headings of the test names.

You would see:
1/1/06 1/2/06 1/3/06 (etc)
Test A data data data

Test B data data data

Test C data data data

(etc)


I admit that I am a complete novice when it comes to using the table layout format but I am not having success with designing this form. I cannot get it to sort as needed - I have tried sub-summaries, etc and all I can get is a very unuseful report :
1/1/06 Test A Data
1/1/06 Test B Data
1/1/06 Test C Data
1/3/06 Test A Data
1/3/06 Test B Data
1/3/06 Test C Data
ad nauseam.

I also noted that we can import from Excel but is there a way to export to Excel? I am thinking that this would be the key to getting my data into the report form that the medical director is looking for but I have not read steps for doing this.

Any help is appreciated...even if it is to direct me to a site / person who has accomplished a similar design.


Thank you,

goutbuster

This is not really the right forum for this question and this is a sketchy answer.

I'm assuming we are looking for a printed report (It may not be possible for a screen view) You need to have a subsummary by date, printed above, with a page break after each ocurrence. In your layout setup set it to print in columns down first and choose as your number of columns the number of dates you wish to show on each page. The layout screen will then show you a small blank area at the left in which to put your data. Sort by date and preview (make sure that you have View as Form or view as List in browse) to see if it looks right.

SlimJim

SlimJim wrote:This is not really the right forum for this question...

Indeed, this is for questions about custom forums, but its not a big deal. Regardless, I've moved this to our general support forum.

What you're asking about is sometimes called a "cross tab" layout. This can be a little tricky, as you're using portals and relationships to show the intersection between a record (test A) and a date field (1/1/06), building a relationship that is on true for that data where these intersect (the test A results from 1/1/06).

Shaun Flisakowski has two examples of this that I like quite a bit.

Hope that gets you started.