Seeker4

Thanks, I was afraid that was going to be the answer. A tabbed panel would have been nice for this application, but there are other approaches that will work too.

I would like to use a tabbed panel to hold portal records. I do know about replicating the portal in each panel and using a different starting record number. This looks viable, but I don't know how to implement some other features I also need: I want the name of the tab to be a field from the record in the portal. One possibility seems to be a custom function or calculated field in the parent record to provide that field. Or what other way might be better? I want the number of tabs to be variable, depending on how many portal records there are (there will be less than 10). I don't see how to do that. Do I have to predefine the maximum number of tabs and copy the portal layout to each?? Or is there a scripted way to say "create another tab just like this one"? If any of the starter solutions do something like this, I'd appreciate learning which one. Thanks!

I do not wish to dictate which PDF reader is installed. My default browser is Firefox but it is the PDF file association that controls what program is launched. I don't think Firefox's built-in PDF viewer is all that great. Just adequate I would call it. fwiw, I tried setting the PDF file association to Firefox and then to PDF-XChange Viewer. Both launch properly as viewers. It is only Acrobat that doesn't work.

I am running FMP 13 Advanced on Windows 7. I've just been through a very frustrating exercise trying to open a PDF file with the default program, Adobe Acrobat, using Send Event. After extensive testing, what I've found is this: Send Event for a .TXT file results in the application associated with .txt being launched for the file. This works fine. Send Event for a .PDF file with the PDF file association set to Adobe Acrobat Reader results in Send Event returning an error 3 and Acrobat does not start. Send Event for a .PDF file with the PDF file association set to FoxIt Reader works fine (FoxIt Reader opens the PDF file properly). My test case consists of a one-line script: Send Event ("aevt"; "odoc"; "report.pdf") "report.pdf" on the Windows command line launches the Acrobat Reader as expected, so Windows file association seems to be working properly. But FMP Send Event results in an error 3. I'll be deploying to a Mac and won't be able to test the code there for a few days. Does anyone know what might be happening or how to get Adobe Acrobat working with FMP? (I did try Open URL but could not get that to work--whether for the same or some other reason, I have not investigated.)

Because I didn't know about them? I don't call myself a novice at FMP without reason! Looks like that might do it. I will read up on them and see how to apply it to my situation.

I have a table containing the names of about 12 mailing lists (number of lists may change later). I need to allow the user to select which mailing lists are to be used for sending a message, And I'd like to design the layout in such a way that it will automatically adapt when the number of lists change. It would be easy enough to show the list names in a portal, with a checkbox for each list name. But I'd really like to have the list in three columns so it takes up less vertical space on the window. Is there a way to flow my list of names into three columns along with their checkboxes? My goal is a final format that looks something like this (whether the list wraps first horizontally or vertically is unimportant): Please choose mailing lists to use: [ ] List 1 [ ] List 2 [ ] List 3 [ ] List 4 [ ] List 5 [ ] List 6 [ ] List 7 [ ] List 8 [ ] List 9 . . . . . Subject of Email: .... Thanks for any suggestions!

So I could create a custom menu that would cause the tools I don't want used to be ignored or operate differently if the user clicked on them. Not quite as nice as removing the visual component as well, but that may work. Thanks!

Thank you, but, ugh, I don't care for that approach. I guess the ability to modify the status bar in the way I want is not exposed. I'll think on my options.

My application generates a report to a new floating document window, enters Preview mode and displays the status bar. The status bar has buttons for navigating through the report, printing, saving to Excel or PDF, etc. All that's just what I need. But below the button the status area includes controls to change the layout, switch the view, or exit preview mode. I don't want any of those capabilities available to the user. How can I eliminate this portion of the status bar? Or is there some other approach I need to take? And, is there a way to add a "close window" button to this status bar?

Not sure what the right forum for this question is, but here goes. I am developing a home owner association solution. I have tables for homeowners and addresses, each with uids so I can relate them. That's all working. Now I want to add support for mailing lists. An address may be in one or more mailing lists. The relationship between addresses and mailing lists is many-to-many so I have created a join table containing address uid and mailing list uid. When I display a homeowner I display all their addresses (may be more than one) in a portal. For each address I want to display a list of mailing list names that address is on. E.g., "ListA, ListB, ListX" if on those three lists. This would be a read-only text field listing the mailing list names and would not be editable. Is there a way to make a calculated field in the Address record that is a summary of the linked-to mailing list names? Or what would be a good approach to achieving this appearance? Thanks!

Stephen, Thank you. I've done something along those lines but am sure there is a better way or more direct way to accomplish this. What I did was search the Address records for addresses that were Owner addresses with PMA flag set and neither address nor owner were deleted. I exported the address and homeowner uids to an Excel file. I repeated the search looking for BillTo records and exported that to another Excel file. Then I went to my new Billing file, which has fields only for address and homeowner uids, and first imported the Owner address set I had just exported. Then I imported the BillTo set, this time matching on homeowner id and updating the address id. That gave me a billing table with exactly one entry per homeowner with the desired address uid. Then I export the billing file out to Excel with about 20 columns of data. I use calculated fields to pull data from related records so that I have pretty column headings in the Excel worksheet. (The Excel worksheet is what goes to the accountant for actual billing.) It seemed obnoxious to me to save the records to Excel and import them again, but I didn't see how to do this directly in FMP (at least without a loop, which would have been possible but probably even less desirable). I'd appreciate any suggestion on any more straightforward way to accomplish this step. (I haven't used FMP since v4 perhaps 15 years ago, so am thoroughly out of practice and am probably missing something simple and obvious.) I suppose I could maintain the billing table with triggers but that might require some slightly tricky scripts to accommodate various changes to homeowner, addresses, etc. I need this billing table only twice a year, so it seemed safer (less code = fewer bugs) to create the table on demand rather than to maintain it. I already have to deal with data errors as I am using FMP to do what is now done with Excel and that worksheet has lots of inconsistencies and little errors. I also know too well that my scripts can introduce errors. So I wrote database validation scripts that check that the data is consistent and flag records with issues. These seem to be working well.

I am uncertain how to get a particular search result. I am creating a Home Owner Association solution, which has: HOA table with one record Lots table with one record per lot (lots have a lot number) Home Owners table with current and previous (timeDeleted not null) home owners. There is a unique homeowner ID per record. Linked to Lots table by lot number. Addresses table with current and deleted (timeDeleted not null) addresses. Linked to home owners table by homeowner ID. Has a Type field with values such as Owner, Billing,and others. And has a PMA flag (0 or 1). I want to create a search that gives me a list of addresses that meets these criteria: If a Billing address exists, use it. If no billing record, then I want the Owner address record that has PMA=1 (there will be exactly one such record per homeowner). Deleted address records are to be excluded, as are address records linked to deleted home owners. The goal of this search is to give me a list, one record per lot's current homeowner, showing where HOA dues bill is to be sent. I can see ways to get this result using two searches and an intermediate table, but am wondering if there is a better way. Thanks for any suggestions!

I've been experimenting with using OnLayoutEnter and specifying the window dimensions as you suggested. However, the dimensions I have available in the layout inspector are the content dimensions, rather than the window dimensions, which can vary depending on whether tool and formatting bars are visible, and I presume vary with the platform as well. I'll try computing the difference between window and content dimensions at startup and applying those to the modal window.

Thank you. I had not thought of using a script trigger, and that clearly is very helpful in this case. I had hoped not to specify the desired size of the layout window beforehand but instead allow the window to size automatically to the layout.

I plan to make extensive use of modal windows in my application. When opening a modal window, I want generally to center it over its parent window. I do that by calculating relative window sizes and positions and then using Move/Resize Window to get it to be the proper shape and size. However, I have a "window flicker" problem--when I first create the window and assign the layout, the window is the same size as the underlying window. I cannot compute the position of the window until after I do a Resize to Fit so that I know the size of the new window. But by then the window is visible, so moving it results in it flickering from its created position in the upper left corner to its desired position. I'd like everything to be hidden/invisible until I've calculated the windows desired position. How can I do that? My script sequence is: New Window Go to Layout Adjust Window - resize to fit (to make window fit the layout) Move/Resize window to desired size and position, using dimensions made available by adjusting window to fit the layout Running FMP 13 Advanced on Windows 7 but will deploy to Mac. Thanks!