FileMaker Tip – Toggle On/Off ; Stop/Go; True/False

There are a lot of little features in FileMaker Pro which are simple to implement and just make your application a little easier to use. One of these is the ability to specify the display value of a boolean value. Since a boolean is either 1 or 0, it may seem like if you have a field that is set to either 1 or 0, that is all that you can display, but this is not true.

On the Data tab of the Inspector, there is an option to select a field and mark it as ‘numeric’. Then within that section, you can choose ‘boolean’. And then here’s the cool part: there is an additional selector which says this: “Display zero values as: ____”, and “Display Non-Zero Values as:_____”. Then you can enter anything you like.

So let’s say you have a button, and you want it to say, “Go” and turn green, or “Stop” and turn red. Simply set the non-zero value, when it is equal to”1”, to display as “Go”; and do the opposite for when it equals zero, to display as “Stop”. Simple and powerful; all at the same time.