Now that you understand the basic components of a FileMaker database, it's time to start adding your own information. Whether your database contains information about individual persons, eBay auctions, products you sell, student grades, or whatever, FileMaker always thinks of that information in individual chunks called records. Each record contains everything the database knows about that person, auction, product, or student.
Since you need to store many smaller pieces of information in each record (like a person's phone number, address, birthday, and so on), FileMaker can give each record an almost infinite number of fields—the specific bits of data that define each record and make it unique.
For example, each person in a database of magazine subscribers gets her own record. First name, last name, phone number, street address, city, state, Zip code, and her subscription's expiration date are all examples of fields each record can include.
The techniques in this section work the same way whether you're creating a new database for the first time, or adding to an existing one.
All records in a database have to have the same fields, but that doesn't mean you have to fill them all in. For instance, in your saltshaker collection database, you might not know the year a particular shaker was manufactured, so you can leave that field blank.
Adding a new record is simple: Choose Records→New Record or press Ctrl+N (⌘-N). (Since you'll be creating lots of records in your FileMaker career, memorize this keyboard shortcut.)
When you're adding new records, you have to be in Browse...