larosche

Here is a new one: I want to print to my cash register printer (Star 500). It only understands ASCII (at least not without creating a custom program). I normally drive the printer from a program I created but I wish to print out my information (I only need text). I have created the layout, but when I print it to a file it always has non ASCII characters. I tried the line printer mode driver from Star but this does not help. I have been able to export to a text file (tab delimited) then sending it to the COM port but this is not very easy to explain to a normal user. Any suggestions? Thanks, Ed Edited subject (removed paragraph) LaRetta (moderator)

Lee, Thanks for the file link. I gave up and created an application in visual basic 6. However I have to run the .exe file and Filemaker at the same time. It will be pretty easy to create an application on my Mac also. Is there a way to force an application to stay on "top" of Filemaker? Thanks everyone! Ed TimeandFlipCard.zip

I have an application where it would be great to refresh a field to display the current time. In other words I want to automatically refresh the field every second to update the time for the user to view. How do I get Filemaker to refresh the field every second? Thanks!

Lee, Your suggestion was the key I needed. I concatonated the fields using a single field and exported the field by itself. I was able to use variable spaces between the fields I wanted to export. In other words I wanted exported field = field1 & " " & field2 & " " & field Thanks for the help! Ed

Hey! I am trying to export records from my database with defined blank areas in each line. Currently I am using text export with tab delimiters. For example; 1234 name number anothernumber I know that I can limit an field to a set size using left(1234,4) that sets the first field to 4 characters. How do I set the spaces between the fields? Say I want 2 spaces from the "1234" and the "name" fields then I want 4 spaces from the "name" field to the "number" field. Thanks for the help, RAD DAD

Not sure which line you want me to remove. I tried removing the line after the fist "loop", but it put the script in an endless loop. Here is the zipped file. SERA Year scores.zip

I have had good luck controlling serial laser scanners with this plug-in: http://www.troi.com/software/serialplugin.html It works pretty good. RAD DAD

I have worked on the example that Ugo sent and am having problems. Several weird things are happening that I cannot explain. When I try to look at the "Ranking" button I get an error about "The selected group of objects include at least one previously identified button...." I have modified the database to work with my caculated positions. If you use the script "rank test" on record 1 then ranking number 8 shows 2 which is in-correct. Record 2 works correctly and record 3 is in-correct after rank one. Any ideas? Thanks again, RAD DAD (how do I attach a file with the new user interface?? I attached the .fp5 but changed the name to .jpg

Thanks everyone. I am looking over the suggestions. I have many applications that require sorting by a max to min number of fields within a record. I wish that Filemaker included this capability. In this case I am trying to use the best 7 of 10 possible scores to calculate the year end score. Currently I am trying to simplify my role as Points Steward for a racing organization. I have found that I can make little mistakes in Excel that affect our year end awards. I am hoping the conversion to Filemaker will reduce these errors. RAD DAD

I am converting an Excel spreadsheet to Filemaker. I am using the "large" function in Excel to get the most significant numbers from a selection. The user interface was easy, but I am stumbling on a method to figure the 7 largest numbers from a selection of ten fields. I am using a calculated values and can easily find the min and max by using "Max(race1,race2,race3,race4,race5,race6)", but how to find the 2nd highest number? Thanks for any help, RAD DAD

I have a simple question. I am trying to count the number of times a number occurs in a field. The field (rider number) is imported with another field (times) for a scoring program in a single file. I want to count the number of times a rider is scored (laps). I created a field (number of laps) and am having trouble setting up a self relationship (I think that is the way to go). Any advise would be great, RAD DAD http://sera.dirtrider.net (this is a database for our kid's races)

I have Filemaker 5.0 loaded and it does not have export to Excel. It does have the usual .dbf, tab delimited, etc. RAD DAD

Thanks to several tips in this forum, I have been able to complete a bar code system for getting information from our member's cards into a computer. I used trio serial plug in (we have serial Symbol LS1004 scanners) with Filemaker. Now I would like to see if anyone knows of a serial interface using Filemaker mobile??? I want to scan bar codes (3 of 9) into Filemaker. Any more ideas to get a serial scanner to work with Filemaker mobile? RAD DAD

I have two files that need help on relationships. I have one file with things like member name, member number, etc. The second file has today's information. I need to look up the data from the first file by either member name or member number. I have successfully created relationships by using either the member name with a lookup (pull down) or a member number with a lookup. If I base the relationship on the number then I can't lookup by name. When I try to put a name in the field, Filemaker comes back and asks for the name first. I would like to have a pull down lookup by either name or number. I have tried to find a book on multi relationships in Filemaker, but the local bookstore has no information on this topic. Any ideas? RAD DAD

I also have a close problem. I am using a bar code scanner and need to remove the last two characters from the scanner (carriage return and line feed) which are non printed characters. How do I backspace twice in my script?