Is there anyway to set up the fields, scripts and layout to have your own custom status bar and easily use it across multiple tables within the same file? I know how to do it on one table but it seems awfully cumbersome to set this up in each table. Is this a good application for something like "Custom Formulas" in Developer?

(Sorry for the delay in replying to this!)

This is one area of FM7 that I find kind of frustrating.

Get ( FoundCount ) operates within the base table from which it is defined. That is, if you create a calc defined as Get ( FoundCount ) in table X it will always return some found count of table X (usually the found count from the front most window of table X) and never the found count from another table. At least this is predictable, but it does make what you're doing a bit frustrating as you have to define a calc like this in every table for which you want to show a status area.

It would be nice if you could define one of these in such a way that it would operate on whatever was front most- regardless of where the calc was defined.

Custom Functions only let you get around this somewhat; the custom function lets you write the definition of your function just once, but you still have to create fields in each table which use this custom function.

As I see it, if this were just one field it would be no big deal, but most people want to dim the left and right arrows used to navigate between record when, for instance, you're on the first or last record of the found set. This requires additional calcs and or relationships which start getting in the way of one's formerly pristine data files.

I guess that is a long winded way of saying that there is no simple way to build a single instance of these structures that you can use in any table.

However, if your navigation is tightly scripted, you could send the current record, current found count, etc. to global fields and then really have just one instance of the status are elements, but that seems to be a lot of overhead.