Mark Bowen

Hi there, Sorry for the long subject, I hope it all shows up on the forums as I haven't been here for quite a while. I was wondering if someone could possibly help me out with a slight quandary that I am having at the moment. I need to export data from Filemaker V7 as a PDF. I can lay out the data and export as PDF with no problems. The only problem that I am having is that people who are using the database are copying and pasting text into fields instead of just writing it in and so I am getting all kinds of different fonts and font sizes appearing in the fields. I saw that it is possible using Auto-Enter -> Calculated Value that I could do this TextFont ((Client) ; "Verdana") This is great but I also need to be able to specify the size as well using TextSize ((Client) ; 10) Is there any way that these two functions can be used within the same Auto-Enter calculation? I can't unfortunately use a script to do this as it is every single time someone types into certain fields so this would be impossible to catch and I am only on Version 7. Not sure if there are new functions in V8 but cannot unfortunately afford to upgrade all of our database clients for the considerable future so was wondering if there is any way around this? Any help with this would be massively appreciated. I'm sure it is probably just me and there is some easy way of using more than one function in an Auto-Enter calculation but I really do have quite limited knowledge of Filemaker and everything always falls to me to have to figure out instead of an outside company being paid. To save money obviously!! Thanks again for any help with any of this. Best wishes, Mark

Hi there, Just wondering on one last thing if anyone had any ideas as to how I could possibly copy the message body text from a field in filemaker and then paste that into the body of the email instead as when doing it using the 'set theMessage' syntax all formatting is lost. Also does anyone know why 'Mail' on OSX is scriptable but if you go into the Apple Script Editor and press record it doesn't actually record anything?? Thanks for all the help. Regards, Mark

Fenton, You are an absolute genius. A true star!!! I set it to file name theAttachment as alias and it all works great!!! Thanks Here is the full code in case anyone is interested : set theSubject to cell "emailSubject" of current table set theMessage to cell "emailMessage" of current table set theRecipient to cell "emailRecipient" of current table set theAttachment to cell "filePath" of current table set theSender to cell "emailSender" of current table tell application "Mail" set newMessage to make new outgoing message with properties {subject:theSubject, content:theMessage} tell newMessage set sender to theSender make new to recipient at end of to recipients with properties {address:theRecipient} tell content make new attachment with properties{file name:theAttachment as alias} at after the last paragraph end tell send newMessage end tell end tell Thanks again Fenton. You are absolutely brilliant and a life saver!! Best wishes, Mark

Hi there, As an update I thought I would show one of the scripts that I am currently working on set theSubject to cell "emailSubject" of current table set theMessage to cell "emailMessage" of current table set theRecipient to cell "emailRecipient" of current table set theAttachment to cell "filePath" of current table set theSender to cell "emailSender" of current table tell application "Mail" activate set newMessage to make new outgoing message with properties {subject:theSubject, content:theMessage} tell newMessage set sender to theSender make new to recipient at end of to recipients with properties {address:theRecipient} tell content make new attachment with properties{file name:alias “Hard Disk:Users:something2add:Desktop:Kiosk Orbs.jpg”} at after the last paragraph end tell send newMessage end tell end tell The parts in bold are where I thought I would be able to write this make new attachment with properties{file name:alias theAttachment} at after the last paragraph but it just doesn't work. The email gets sent but without an attachment. Any thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated. P.S. This script uses the Mail application as you can tell but my previous post in this message was using the xMail scripting addition. If anyone has ideas on either of these and as to why they won; work then I will be forever in your debt. Thanks once again for any knowledge imparted on this. Regards, Mark

Hi again, Got most of it working now. The only problem I am having is that I want to pass the script a filePath to use instead of using a set theAttachment to (choose file with prompt "Choose the file to attach to the message...") I have tried : set theAttachment to cell "filePath" of current table and the filePath is a (definitely) valid path to a file on the computer but it just keeps on saying file not found. I am guessing that the choose file with prompt part returns the file name as something other than just a string but I just don't know what that is and don't know how to set it! If anyone understands this and can help me with it I would be exceptionally grateful. This (I am pretty sure) is the only part that I need now and then my little app should be ready for unleashing on my work colleagues!! Thanks again for all the help and any help that you might be able to impart to me on this. Regards, Mark

Hi Fenton & Reed, Thanks for all the info. This was actually an applescript application that I wanted to launch whilst passing values to it. I need to make a very simple emailer for our company so that we can email files to people. I would need to pass the emailSubject, emailMessage, emailSender, emailRecipient and filePath to the application so that it can work with these values. All of the fields are Global fields so not a problem with current record or anything like that. Actually last night (very very late) I happened across an Applescript that set up the variables exactly as you stated Fenton so I was going to post this morning anyway so that people wouldn't spend too long answering but maybe to answer if there was a better way. Thankyou very very much for all the information. Regards, Mark

Hi there, Just wondering if someone could help me with something. Say I have an Applescript which has some variables in it such as emailSubject, emailMessage etc... How can I easily call this script from Filemaker instead of typing the whole thing in and at the same time as calling it pass in the emailSubject, emailMessage variables from data supplied via Filemaker fields. I would like to basically be able to pass data from Filemaker to the script. The script would be used for emailing and as I want different details each time I do not want to have to hard code in the variables as they will need to be dynamically generated via Filemaker. Any help with this would be greatly appreciated as I have been trying to do this all day with no joy at all. The only thing I noticed was that you can have property name "My Name" and so on but I couldn't find a way of getting the part in the inverted commas to be fields from Filemaker. Thanking anyone in advance for any help with this. Regards, Mark Bowen

Hi there, Are you originally from Birmingham then. Why did you move to Canada? Thanks for the heads up. After a lot of head scratching and code tweaking I saw this in a small applet someone had made and tried it and it worked! Thanks for the post though. Take care, Mark

Hi there, I was just wondering if someone could help me with a (hopefully) small problem I am having. I recently downloaded the xMail OSAX from http://www.osaxen.com and have successfully configured an email script for our SMTP server. This all works fine with the Apple Script Editor and hard coded values. The problem I am having is that I need to be able to send the following variables from Filemaker to the script emailSubject - emailMessage - emailSender - emailRecipient I currently have them hard coded into the script but would like to be able to fill in some fields in Filemaker and then have Filemaker send these values to the script (should it be a script document or saved as an application?) and then perform the script using these values. Part of the xMail script is shown below on sendEmail() --> customize the following variables as you wish set |to| to emailRecipient set |from| to emailSender end sendEmail As you can see I would like to be able to fill in a field in Filemaker called emailRecipient and a field called emailSender and then pass these values to the script and perform it. There will also be two other (possibly more) field values needing to be sent. I took a look at the help file in Filemaker but they only came up with a : Perform AppleScript ["tell application "My Applet" to doMyRoutine()"] which didn't show me how to pass variables to the script. Any help with this would be greatly appreciated. Regards, Mark Bowen

Hi there, Just came across this thread and tried out a simplified version of it via the Apple Script Editor but cannot get it to work. I was wondering if anyone could take a look and let me know where I am going wrong. tell application "Mail" set newMessage to make new outgoing message with properties {subject:"Test Email From Filemaker", content:"Test email content"} tell newMessage set sender to "webmaster@soundlogic.co.uk" make new to recipient at end of to recipients with properties {address:"webmaster@soundlogic.co.uk"} tell content make new attachment with properties {file name:"Hard Disk:Users:markbowen:Desktop:Uploader:account.php"} at after the last paragraph end tell send newMessage end tell end tell This sends an email message okay with the to address, from address and subject and body but no attachment is added in. Could someone let me know where I am going wrong. I was pretty sure that I had all the code correct. Also is there a way instead of sending the email to place it into the 'Drafts' folder instead so that you can send it later? Any help with this would be greatly appreciated. Regards, Mark Bowen

Hi there, Just came across this post and was wondering how to use the 'shell' commands from within Filemaker. Are these actually for use in Mac OSX or are they Windows only specific? Any help with this would be greatly appreciated. Regards, Mark Bowen

Hi there, Just noticed this post and was wondering if it is at all possible to use the OSX smtp server to do all of this but to also add attachments to the email and even possibly multiple attachments to build a kind of mini email client. Any help on this would be greatly appreciated. Regards, Mark Bowen

Hi Fenton, Thanks for the reply. Yes I have seen that programme (EZxslt) before but I don't really have the money for buying something like that unfortunately. I did have a look at the simple_table.xsl before but as they are using the for-each statements and what I need to do is to place each of the fields of each row into a certain place I wasn't really too sure of how to do that as at the moment if I use that then all the table cells won't line up with the ones above due to them being created afresh and without size information. Really I think my main problem is that I don't understand enough of XML & XSLT to be able to do this and especially the XML that Filemaker spits out. Such things as how to find out what to write when you want to spit out a certain field instead of every row etc.. I don't know if it is just me or it just seems the Filemaker way is a bit long winded?? Anyway I will put my head back to the exceptionally sharp grindstone and see if I can figure something out. If in the mean time anyone has any ideas then I would be greatly appreciative of any help given. Many thanks again. Mark

Hi Martin, Thanks for the reply. Yes I have looked at those tutorials but as they only create very simple textual output I wasn't really too sure of how to get them to create tables and the such. If you or anyone else has any more ideas about this then I would be exceptionally greatful as doing this submission each month is starting to get on my nerves and I would love to find a quicker way of automating this. Thanks for the help. Mark

Hi there, First of all can I apologise if I am doing the wrong thing in posting here. I have already posted at http://fmforums.com/forum/showtopic.php?tid/168856/ but wasn't too sure if that was the right place to post as there have been views but no replies. So I apologise if I am doing wrong, I don't mean to I just could really do with a hand if someone has the time to lend. Thanks! Mark Bowen I am very new to all the transformation of XML to HTML using XSLT but was wondering if someone could take a stab at leading me in the right direction. I have been trying for the past 12 hours to create something which I am sure must be able to be done with utter ease but it is just eluding me as to how to do it. My problem is this : I work for a commercial production company as the Senior Producer where we create radio adverts. With each advert we have to supply the details of any music tracks used for PRS details. Basically in the simplest form I have a table in the database called Music Details which stores the ad title, music publisher, music catalogue, cd number, track number, composer and duration. What I have to do each month is to export this data into a format that can be emailed to the PRS company. Unfortunately they require this in Word (.doc) format. I know that there is no way that I am going to be able to learn enough to be able to do this using XSLT from Filemaker so I noticed that Word can open up and display HTML files quite well and as the format that they are asking for the data to be supplied in is fairly simple this is what I thought I would do! - INSERT HEADACHE!! SIDENOTE : I have been using a sort of Mail Merge from within Word at the moment as that is the only way in which I can get this all to work but as I have to submit the details for over 35 stations this is starting to get a little long winded and so I am trying to find a much easier way of doing all of this and automating it as much as possible What I need to do would be able to be done with the Export as HTML Table in the export dialogue of Filemaker if it wasn't for the fact that unfortunately the PRS company need to have a header part to the document with various parts filled in. INSERT ANOTHER HEADACHE!! Basically what I need to create is shown here at : http://www.soundlogic.co.uk/userDownloads/headerTrial.html This is a very simple, non styled version but will give the general idea I hope. Where in the table at the bottom there are all the columns such as number of commercials, commercial title and so on I have this data as seperate fields in the database. What I need to do is to spit out these details in rows underneath the headings mentioned just now. I would like to do this using XML export and an XSLT stylesheet but for the life of me can't figure it out! All the examples I could find to do with Filemaker and XML-XSLT were all done using a 'for-each' style syntax and I think that what I really need to do is to say (in simple terms as at the moment I feel a bit simple!!) place this field in this table cell then place this field in this table cell and so on and so forth. The only other thing I would need to do is to place the station name into the document header in the relevant place and also the month. I have tried with about 15 different ways now and none of them will even get as far as spitting out a file for me as I keep on getting errors in Filemaker. If anyone could possibly take a look at this and give me a helping hand then I would be exceptionally greatful as this is starting to give me a headache and I will probably have to otherwise admit defeat and go back to submitting these details in a very long and laborious fashion. Thankyou in advance for any help with this matter. Regards, Mark Bowen

Hi there, I am very new to all the transformation of XML to HTML using XSLT but was wondering if someone could take a stab at leading me in the right direction. I have been trying for the past 12 hours to create something which I am sure must be able to be done with utter ease but it is just eluding me as to how to do it. My problem is this : I work for a commercial production company as the Senior Producer where we create radio adverts. With each advert we have to supply the details of any music tracks used for PRS details. Basically in the simplest form I have a table in the database called Music Details which stores the ad title, music publisher, music catalogue, cd number, track number, composer and duration. What I have to do each month is to export this data into a format that can be emailed to the PRS company. Unfortunately they require this in Word (.doc) format. I know that there is no way that I am going to be able to learn enough to be able to do this using XSLT from Filemaker so I noticed that Word can open up and display HTML files quite well and as the format that they are asking for the data to be supplied in is fairly simple this is what I thought I would do! - INSERT HEADACHE!! SIDENOTE : I have been using a sort of Mail Merge from within Word at the moment as that is the only way in which I can get this all to work but as I have to submit the details for over 35 stations this is starting to get a little long winded and so I am trying to find a much easier way of doing all of this and automating it as much as possible What I need to do would be able to be done with the Export as HTML Table in the export dialogue of Filemaker if it wasn't for the fact that unfortunately the PRS company need to have a header part to the document with various parts filled in. INSERT ANOTHER HEADACHE!! Basically what I need to create is shown here at : http://www.soundlogic.co.uk/userDownloads/headerTrial.html This is a very simple, non styled version but will give the general idea I hope. Where in the table at the bottom there are all the columns such as number of commercials, commercial title and so on I have this data as seperate fields in the database. What I need to do is to spit out these details in rows underneath the headings mentioned just now. I would like to do this using XML export and an XSLT stylesheet but for the life of me can't figure it out! All the examples I could find to do with Filemaker and XML-XSLT were all done using a 'for-each' style syntax and I think that what I really need to do is to say (in simple terms as at the moment I feel a bit simple!!) place this field in this table cell then place this field in this table cell and so on and so forth. The only other thing I would need to do is to place the station name into the document header in the relevant place and also the month. I have tried with about 15 different ways now and none of them will even get as far as spitting out a file for me as I keep on getting errors in Filemaker. If anyone could possibly take a look at this and give me a helping hand then I would be exceptionally greatful as this is starting to give me a headache and I will probably have to otherwise admit defeat and go back to submitting these details in a very long and laborious fashion. Thankyou in advance for any help with this matter. Regards, Mark Bowen

Hi there, Not sure if anyone can help with this one. It's a bit difficult. Where I work we have a database that I designed. We are a Commercial Production Company that produces radio adverts all day long. We are currently employed in the second largest contract in Europe. The problem is this. As we create radio ads we type in hundreds of scripts a day and they have to be in a special format, that being the voice directions go in a column on the left hand side of the page and then the script for each voice on the right. This would be easy to do in Filemaker in just one field by using the Alt Tab (Macintosh) key to produce the desired result. However our major problem is that we have to export these scripts to Word to be able to send them to Clients and Sales Executives to peruse. This is where I came up with a script to copy the main body of the script (the parts on the right hand side) and open up a Word template file which then has a UserForm that I created which allows you to type in information which is then auto pasted into the correct bookmark places. Once this has all been entered the copied text from Filemaker is pasted onto the page. Unfortunately as the Mac and any computer only has one clipboard this means that the writer either has to then go back to Filemaker and manually copy the left column or type it all back in again. If anyone is following any of this then what my question is is: Is it possible to copy or export in some way both parts and possibly other information, open up the Word template and then insert this information into the file. I know you could do this with a Filemaker eported file and then use the Data Import feature of Word but unfortunately the people operating the database are not really all that familiar with these procedures and also because so many scripts are created in one day then this is also not really all that practical. If anyone can come up with a solution to this one then I would be very greatful. The only thing I could think of was maybe copying the left side into a field and then using a seperator " | " maybe the pipe symbol and then copying the right side afterwards then when it gets to Word the information is somehow taken out. I can do this kind of text calculation in Filemaker using the Position and Left functions etc... but does anyone know if these exist in VBScript in word on the Mac and if they do what they are called. I will stop now and say a massive sorry for babbling on so much and also a massive big thankyou in advance to anyone who can come up with the answer to this problem. Regards, Mark Bowen info@kingfishergraphics.com

Hi there, Not sure if anyone can help with this one. It's a bit difficult. Where I work we have a database that I designed. We are a Commercial Production Company that produces radio adverts all day long. We are currently employed in the second largest contract in Europe. The problem is this. As we create radio ads we type in hundreds of scripts a day and they have to be in a special format, that being the voice directions go in a column on the left hand side of the page and then the script for each voice on the right. This would be easy to do in Filemaker in just one field by using the Alt Tab (Macintosh) key to produce the desired result. However our major problem is that we have to export these scripts to Word to be able to send them to Clients and Sales Executives to peruse. This is where I came up with a script to copy the main body of the script (the parts on the right hand side) and open up a Word template file which then has a UserForm that I created which allows you to type in information which is then auto pasted into the correct bookmark places. Once this has all been entered the copied text from Filemaker is pasted onto the page. Unfortunately as the Mac and any computer only has one clipboard this means that the writer either has to then go back to Filemaker and manually copy the left column or type it all back in again. If anyone is following any of this then what my question is is: Is it possible to copy or export in some way both parts and possibly other information, open up the Word template and then insert this information into the file. I know you could do this with a Filemaker eported file and then use the Data Import feature of Word but unfortunately the people operating the database are not really all that familiar with these procedures and also because so many scripts are created in one day then this is also not really all that practical. If anyone can come up with a solution to this one then I would be very greatful. The only thing I could think of was maybe copying the left side into a field and then using a seperator " | " maybe the pipe symbol and then copying the right side afterwards then when it gets to Word the information is somehow taken out. I can do this kind of text calculation in Filemaker using the Position and Left functions etc... but does anyone know if these exist in VBScript in word on the Mac and if they do what they are called. I will stop now and say a massive sorry for babbling on so much and also a massive big thankyou in advance to anyone who can come up with the answer to this problem. Regards, Mark Bowen info@kingfishergraphics.com http://www.kingfishergraphics.com/phpBB/

Hi there, I was just wondering how to do this best. I have a pop up menu that uses a value list based on a field from another file. When the values come up they are in alphabetical order. How do I get them to come up in an order defined by myself. I tried numbers in front of the items but it just came out as 1 - First Item 10 - Tenth Item 2 - Second Item And so on... Any help would be greatly appreciated. Regards, Mark Bowen info@kingfishergraphics.com http://www.kingfishergraphics.com/phpBB/

Hi there, I am fairly new to Filemaker and these forums so please go easy on me! :-) I have just created a database that has a main file for the list of clients. I then have a very simple database that lists the products and prices. These are then used in a Portal within the main clients database to show what they have purchased. These purchases are stored within a third file. This is where my problem lies. If I wanted to create an Invoice for each seperate company from within the third file then I could easily do this but what I need to be able to do is to invoice the clients via a third party. Imagine the clients have been sent though via an Agency and then all of these clients are invoiced in one big bunch through that agency. When I go into the third file I want to be able to create one record for each of the client purchases. The problem I am having is that each of the purchases for a client within the portal creates a new record entry in the third file so I need to be able to print an Invoice which states the Client name and then lists the purchases and then goes onto the next client etc.... I managed to create a self join and show all the purchases within a portal in the third file but I get a record for each item. If anyone has any idea at all as to what I am blabbering on about and can lend a hand then I would be very greatful. Regards, Mark Bowen info@kingfishergraphics.com http://www.kingfishergraphics.com/phpBB/