With the release of FileMaker 13.0v2, the added functionality of the FMP URL protocol was reason enough to upgrade, but for us at Portage Bay Solutions, we were just as excited about the added option to “preserve external container storage” when importing data from containers between FileMaker databases.

There was much rejoicing when FileMaker added the functionality to store container data externally. Gone were the days of referenced files and broken container links. After changing one of our larger solutions to use externally stored containers, we soon discovered that our process of migrating data in these containers between two files was much more problematic than we had expected, so we switched back to embedded containers in order to maintain our current process of migrating container data.

Flash forward to the release of FM 13.0v2.  We began testing the new functionality by changing all of the current internally stored containers to external containers. Fortunately, FileMaker makes this process easy by automatically creating the external links for internally stored files when the container’s storage options are reconfigured. When it came to import the data from one table to another, we found the process was the same as prior FM versions, but with one minor change to the import options: Specify the file, specify the import field mapping, check the checkbox to “Preserve external container storage”.

Fantastic.
~Joe Ranne