Printing from Filemaker Pro 8

1st, you should have asked this Q in filemaker topic, it is a fm related pb.
to print portals, you need to make them as big as the max amount of lines to be printed (maybe across several pages), then use the printing/sliding feature to auto-reduce the block at preview/print time.
most of the time, you should not proceed like this, and should use a layout with summary + body in the related records table; you then get a much better report with less work, and won't have any problem with the amount of records as this is all automatic in this case.
let me know if you need more info about this (sorry, but i ignore yr skill and don't know whether I should explain more or not).

Many thanks, lesouef!  I WAS reasonably competent with FMP-6 and earned part of my daily bread constructing FMP databases for a small company. But am having a hell of a time with version seven - which I dislike intensely. For instance, I see no advantage to having multiple tables in one file. FMP-6 worked just fine (and fast enough) with separate files related to each other. I still work that way.
I think you have given me sufficient info to solve my problem, although I am not quite sure what "the related records table" is that you refer to. Is this the invoice table? I will go back and play with both possibilities you mention.
Regards,
DonEnnio

I meant "another way is to concatenate all items in a single field, not file!"

Thanks again,

to answer a question you implied in your first help text, I have to consider my efficiency with FMP as at best "intermdiate." You have obviously had more expereience and your comments have been helpful. I will certainly experiment with the concatenate idea, a possibility that I never before considered.

Regards

quite easy in fact.
from the invoice, goto related records.
goto to 1st
loop
define $tmp  = $tmp &  item name & price & whatever & [return]
goto next
end loop
then use $tmp for say invoice::item_list for instance. of course you can improve the stuff with tabs, text styles, conditional returns if the field is empty, etc...
especially useful if you wanna send an email where only one field is used as the body text

Easy... when one knows how ;-).

BTW, this is also my first experience with Experts Exchange, an incredible help source.

Thanks again.
DonEnnio

need an example?

Would be helpful ;-).

http://www.lesouef.net/files/invoices.fp7

Thanks again, but it will be a while before I try to duplicate your effort ;-) !

In the meantime, perhaps I can impose on your helpfulness once again with a small but mystifying peculiarity in FMP-8 that might interest you. I have always disliked the fact that FMP puts left oriented text directly on the left border where it is a bit difficult to read and simply not very elegant. I would have preferred to indent from the field border a bit without using an empty space that would interfere with sort order, etc. I have never found an elegant workaround for this problem - although perhaps the word "problem" is overdone. Its just a feature that I would like to have available.

On my new FMP-8 update CD, there are the usual collections of templates. I am modifying the template called "Purchase orders" and have noticed that the texts, etc. are no longer jammed against the left field border, but are set in (indented) about one space (or perhaps a half-space) to the right. Great! Filemaker is finally catching up to my ingenious thinking. But not really, when I create a new, left oriented field, the text number, etc is jammed into the left field border just like in the good old days - only now there is an alignment problem. The data in my new field doesn't align with the data in the template field provided by FMP.

Do you have any idea what is causing this - and how do I go about getting this indent in future new databases?

'preciate your help!

DonEnnio

I noticed that too; everything was ok untill v7 and for some reason, the 1st character of a block is really a 0 pixel indent, so the 1st character touches the box.
If they wanted 0 to be really a real 0 in v8, they could at least have converted the former layout boxes with 1 pixel indent to keep the same look because, old layouts done in v7 look bad. So far, these is no easy correction, all you can do is to set all boxes with an indent of 1 pixel mini, 2 for popups...

MANY THANKS, HOPEFULLY WE WILL COMMUNICATE AGAIN. I ASSUME THAT YOU ALSO MONITOR THE FILEMAKER QUESTIONS - WHERE I WILL CORRECTLY SUBMIT NEXT TIME.

I do monitor filemaker questions, this is even the only thing I do usually!