The Learner

Hello, I guess the above title says it all. The Send Mail script step gives me an “Unknown Error: -1.” when the file to be attached to the email has a name that contains French accents. If I remove the accents from the file name, everything works fine. Amongst the approximately ten thousand files involved, about four thousand have a French name with accents. I can’t possibly fix all those file names manually. Is there a way to make the Send Mail script step work with those file names with accents? I’m using FM 19.2.2.234 and Windows 10, and my email app is Thunderbird. Thanks for your help.

Well, I'm sorry if there was some misunderstanding. But above is what I said in my second post.

Issue resolved. Thank you.

Thanks very much. Your calculation does what I want except for the comma instead of the and. But I'll live with it.

Thank you for your response. The publication dates are already displayed in the portal to the publication table on the main layout. l want these dates to also be displayed in the editor's portal in the card window. I don't want the publication dates above the portal, simply in each row of the portal, beside the book no and the book title.

Hi, I have a table called Books and a table called Publication. On a layout based on Books, I have a portal based on boo_PUB_BooksId (Books::Id = boo_PUB_BooksId), where one or two publication dates are selected. In a card window based on Books, I have a portal based on boo_BOOKS::Editor (Books::g_SelectedEditor = boo_BOOKS::Editor) that displays the nos and the titles of books from selected editors. That works fine. Except I want to add the publication date or dates in that portal. But I can’t manage to extract the dates from boo_PUB_BooksId (the portal on the Books layout). Could someone help me achieve that. I’d like the dates to be displayed as follows: If single date: 25 October 2023 If two dates: 25 October 2023 and 30 October 2023 Right now, the card window is displayed by means of a script and a global field that is populated from a value list. Thanks for your help.

Thanks very much.

Perfect. I've made these changes. But just so I understand the rationale, why should the calculation field be in the Dashboard table?

Thanks for your very clear explanations. I have found a workaround. I've created a text field LastPageNumber in the Expenses table, added a script step that sets that field to $lastPage and changed the formatting condition to DSB_Dashboard::gPortalPageNum = Expenses::LastPageNumber. And so even when the $lastPage variable ceases to exists, the text field LastPageNumber keeps its value. Thanks again for all your help.

Good Morning, So the script now does not exceed the minimum and maximum page number. This issue is resolved. As for the conditional formatting, it works fine on the left arrow but for some reason that I can't manage to identify, the right arrow behaves differently. The portal on which I'm testing this has 18 pages. When I reach page 18, the right arrow button does turn to grey but as soon as I move the cursor away from it, it loses its formatting and goes back to white. Any idea what can explain this? The formatting condition on the right arrow is : DSB_Dashboard::gPortalPageNum = $lastPage. And below is the script.

Sorting the relationship looks like it does the trick. So let's leave it at that as far as the sorting is concerned. But I'm very much interested in the third point you listed this morning in your first post: Would implementing this require a lot of changes?

Good Day, It works fine, except that the descending order in which the portal was sorted previoulsy is lost. Can the portal filter be tweaked so that the List of IDs is processed starting with the highest one? Is this the right approach? Thanks.

Thanks very much. I'm going to get to work and try to implement this in my solution.

Good Day, Dashboard::Zkp is a number field with a serial number generated on the creation of a new year, and a new year is created by script (the dashboard table currently has five records, for years 2019 to 2023). Expenses:ZkfDashboard is simply a number field. "Allow creation of records in this table via this relationship" is checked on the "Expenses:ZkfDashboard" side of the relationship.

the relationship is: Dashboard::Zkp = Expenses:ZkfDashboard

Hello all, I have a small accounting solution with two tables: Dashboard and Expenses. On a layout based on the dashboard, I have a 10-row portal that displays all expenses. I'd like to be able to move from the first 10 rows to rows 11-20, and then 21-30, etc., and back, by simply clicking two arrows, so that there is no longer a need for the scroll bar. Can someone guide me through this? Thanks.

Thanks again for your help.

I meant to say I can't do anything with that arrow. It's frozen. Any idea what could explain why this container field is not working? As for the rest of your comment, my FM abilities being quite limited, I'll have to see if I can implement your suggestions. For instance, for the already existing records, how do I proceed to store filenames in local text fields and the path to the master folder in a global field? And speaking of external storage, I do have one DB that contains over 7000 photos and videos in external storage. The container field no longer works in that case either. Can solution (a) above be tweaked to deal with this? I guess the easiest would be to find a way to have this container field work as it used to. Thanks a lot for your time. I would never have been able to resolve any of this on my own.

Thank You, Just tried your first option and its works fine, which means as you say that the stored path is indeed correct. Which begs the question as to why the container field no longer works. Below is a screen capture of that container field. It's black with an arrow at the bottom and no other video controls, and nothing happens when I open the record. What in your view is the best approach to this in terms of long-term stability and avoiding hassles when upgrading: container field or webviewer?

Here are the paths as stored in the record: movie:230. Back to the Beginning (28-12-2012).mp4 moviewin:/G:/VIDEOS/230. Back to the Beginning (28-12-2012).mp4 movie:166. Guatanamo (18-10-2012).mp4 moviewin:/G:/VIDEOS/166. Guatanamo (18-10-2012).mp4

Thank You, right now the paths are stored in a container field in each record. It worked fine until the last upgrade to FM 19.3.2.206, now the container field no longer works so I'm not sure how to find an example of the path as stored in the record. It looks like the path to the external drive is no longer recognized. It's not the first I've had a similar issue following an upgrade so I thought switching to a webviewer approach would resolve this issue for good. Here are two examples as produced by dropping the files in a browser: file:///G:/VIDEOS/230.%20Back%20to%20the%20Beginning%20(28-12-2012).mp4 file:///G:/VIDEOS/166.%20Guatanamo%20(18-10-2012).mp4

Hi everyone, I want to use a webviewer to play mp3 and mp4 files but I can't manage to construct the right path to the external drive where those files are stored. I have hundreds of records each with its own mp3 or mp4, so I guess the way to access the right mp3 or mp4 from the right record would be to use the ConvertFromFileMakerPath function in the webviewer calculation. Amongst other things, I've tried this calculation: ConvertFromFileMakerPath ( "filewin:/G:/VIDEOS/"; URLPath ), but it's obviously the right approach. And frankly I'm lost as to how to construct the right path. Could anyone help? Thanks.

Hello everyone, I'm storing some videos in a portal in record A. If I'd like to have access to a video already stored in record A from another record, is there a way to reference that record A video in that other record portal. The idea is to avoid duplication and, at the same time, having a copy of the video in my solution, as opposed to storing it on my computer hard drive. Thanks.

Thanks Wim for your detailed response. I will explore each aspect of your response carefully. But I must say, at first glance your suggestions appear way beyond my knowledge and abilities in front of a computer screen. For instance, I have no idea what integrating with Microsoft's APIs means... But a couple of questions come to my mind: 1) I understand I'd have first to transfer to OneDrive all the Word documents to be converted that are now in my FM database , correct? 2) Once transferred, could they all be converted into PDFs as a batch, or would they have to be converted one by one?

Hello all, just a quick question: is it possible to save Word documents in a Container field as PDFs? Does FM allow for that? Thanks.