Seamlessly share with Excel and PDF files: Being able to import Excel spreadsheets is not new. But version 8's ability to export to Excel now makes back-and-forth data sharing truly painless. Import Excel files directly into FileMaker without having to predefine your fields. When you're done working with that data in FileMaker, export it right back to Excel. Sweet. In the same easy sharing vein, the PDF Maker lets you instantly save any FileMaker data as a PDF document. For more information, see pages 226 and 228.
No more head scratching over relationships: Creating relational databases, often a confusing process for beginners, became significantly easier in FileMaker 7 with its click-and-drag relationship graphs. Version 8 adds a small but very helpful improvementnow you can add notes to remind yourself and others why or how a particular relationship was created (Figure 1.3). For more information, see pages 131 and 136.
Figure 1.3. Add a note to a relationship graph to remind yourself and others how it's structured.
Email almost anything instantly: The new Fast Send feature lets you email just the data you want to share, whether it's a single field (even a picture) or multiple files (including Excel or PDF documents). For more information, see page 243.
Quickly create tabbed layouts: FileMaker's new tabbed controls make it easy to group related items into a single screeneven if the original layout sprawls across several pages. For more information, see page 191.
Make fewer mistakes when entering data: Type a few letters into a field and FileMaker's auto-complete feature offers a drop-down list of likely items, based on past entries for that particular field. Best of all, you can set it up in a couple of clicks (Figure 1.4). For more information, see page 100.
Figure 1.4. Type a few letters into a field and a drop-down list appears of likely items based on past entries.
Instantly spot misspelled words: You now can set FileMaker to instantly underline questionable words as you type. See page 80.
