Richard Sillitto

Hi, Just a guess, but this scenario does help with an open office type environment. For example, a manager leaves their desk to go and make a cup of coffee. A member of staff comes along and tries to get into a section of the database they aren't normally allowed into as the database has been left logged in as the manager. The re-login process prevents them getting into that sensitive area. In a small business such as mine, this is a typical instance I'd like to protect against - either maliciously or by accident. Richard.

Hi Everyone, Simple one here that is throwing my brain! I have a time entry field (recording the time a job started). So a user might enter "09:00" which is stored internally in FMP as "09:00:00" as shown by the data debug viewer. I then want to extract this time into a description field I use for an invoice line item. As I'm not interested in seconds, I use the following calc: Left ( Time_Start ; 5 ) And add this into the formation of the text description field with the usual concatenations. The result, however for the above example time is to produce: 9:00: ie the leading zero isn't being counted in the "5" characters extracted. Any quick and easy solutions. Seems to be that FMP isn't being very rigerous in how it's handling its time formats (ie it shows it one way in the data viewer, but handles it another in calcs). Cheers, Richard.

That works - thanks! It's similar to a custom function I was trying to use - but didn't work. And in response to the other chap who said "such as" - I started to compose a response showing how it _didn't_ work, and then realised that my test database was working as expected. That led to more confusion for me - so sorry that I didn't get back to you directly straight away! Thanks all. Richard.

Hi All, I wonder if anyone can help me. I've tried to create a function that extracts a filename off the end of a filepath on a mac of the format: "RAID:Thisfolder:anotherfolder:Thefilename.pdf" I thought this should be relatively easy - using a RIGHT function, and using Position to find the last ":". But Position returns the wrong position count, and I can't see why. Any ideas? Richard.

Yep, that works. Many thanks! Richard.

Sadly I too have this problem. Any suggestions anyone? Richard.

Hi There, Thanks for the reply. It doesn't seem to be that simple (?). I've used this technique before when working FMP peer-to-peer, but as the database is being shared by FMS, the FM Networking options are greyed out when I manage the database in question. Am I missing something? Richard.

Hello all, I'm not sure if this is the correct place to ask this question - but I'm not sure where is. It sort of applies to Layouts?! I want to have a "useful info" page where weekly one of the guys in the office inserts a PDF into a container field that then is available to everyone on the system, kind of like a noticeboard. I've set up a global container field for this purpose, which works ok in isolation, but I've only recently learnt the fact that global fields have a new instance per user in a multi-user environment (as I am). This is, of course, great most of the time. But for my example, what's the easiest way to make the field available to all users. Is it as simple as making a "Useful Information" table and making sure only one record ever gets created, and it is in a container field on this record that the data gets updated? Somehow feels vulnerable to having another record created somehow ruining the party... Many thanks, Richard.

Hi There, I have a solution on running on FMS which relies on a core front end database and several support databases. Is there a way I can make only the core front end visible on the "Open Remote" that users see from their client FMP? Many thanks, Richard.

Many thanks for the swift replies guys. Fonts - yes, I guessed as much. I shall read my way through those links to find the best way forward for my solution. Graphics - It is odd, as in the PC world FMP defaults to showing an "old" graphic that was on the layout that I deleted a while back. I've been using .psd as my graphic files, which might be at the route of my problem. I'm just going to go through and tweek the layout and replace the graphics with .png and see if that helps. Richard

Hello All, First off, many thanks for a great forum. Whenever I do a google for something I'm stuck with FMP, the answer always seems to be here! I'm in the process of building a large (for me!) database that will be at the core of our business. As such its going to be viewed predomenantly by people using FMP on either a mac or PC. Being a Mac man, I've done most of the design thus far using FMP Advanced on a Mac. The database is now served by FMS on a Windows Server 2003 system. Viewing the layouts on a Mac, and they look as I expect. Load the same ones up on a PC, and they look rubbish! The fonts are different (I guess I've not used compatible fonts somehow?) The graphics look different. For instance, I have photoshopped graphics to remove the backgrounds. On the Mac, the backgrounds are correctly "see through" on the PC, I get a big block of white. Some of the graphics won't even display. Is this normal behaviour, or have I not clicked the "PC compatability button" somewhere? Many thanks for any help you can offer. Richard.