saranyc

We've come up with a potential solution for tracking who is deleting records and for resurrecting records that were mistakenly deleted. It is simple, here it is: Disable apple E; Make scripts/buttons (with full access priv) for deleting current records and found sets; The scripts export to a Delete table which have the table name, rec id, and all field info; When we realize that a rec has been mistakenly deleted, we can re-import the recs into the appropriate table. Any of you have better/more sophisticated ways to accomplish this data security? As always, thanks for the help! Sara

Hi Folks, Looking for a way to verify addresses. We have about 131,000 address records in a rolodex table for 34,000 people in our person table. Many of these are (obviously) incorrect/out of date, and often the problem is a simple typo or zip code error. When we get updated info from people, we want to incorporate a verification system so we can tell on the spot if a street name is misspelled etc... Here are 2 solutions we thought of, neither is perfect: 1) Get info from usps, make value lists of streets in given zip codes, and validate the street name by that zip code's list on entry. The major problem with this is that we're talking about NYC, so the lists would be pretty big... 2) Use a webviewer to scrape a valid/invalid address response from an address checking website, like usps.com. The problem with this seems to be that when you type info into the address fields on the site, the url doesn't change, so presumably, we couldn't have the page load automatically using a calculation...the address clerk would have to type in the address- which admittedly isn't the end of the world, but it also isn't that sexy... How do other developers deal with this? Are there plug ins? I read in the white paper for novices that plug-ins should be avoided at all costs, any thoughts on that? Thoughts generally? Thanks in advance- I always get solid advice from you characters- and I really appreciate the shared wisdom! -Sara

UGH! I realize that our scans are all JPGS! Is there any possible way you know of an OCR program from which we could take the executable file (like you did before) and just replace the do shell script line? I know that is unlikely, but I thought I'd ask! Thanks, Sara

Thanks so much for your help- we've finally got this working- almost. It seems that the pdftotext shell script will only translate those docs which were created electronically, and then saved as pdfs, versus scanned docs. I wonder if this is the case for all such programs... If we do find one that will read our (mostly) scanned contracts, this script will work beautifully- the thought of using keyword fields to search in thousands of contracts is devastating! Thanks again. I'll be searching for software now- if you happen to know of a different one we might try, please let me know!!! Take Care, Sara

Hi again, Been struggling with this all day! I can't get FM to write to my desktop either- it says the file needs to be renamed or unlocked or saved elsewhere. I tried renaming it, but that didn't work either. The other scripts are malfunctioning as well. The second one says "object not found" and gives me another error message (-1006?) when i select a file, but then inserts the file name, and leaves the container field blank. Then it prompts me to select a file again, which it does insert in the container field. For some reason, the File_Path_Mac field is not populating, which I'm guessing is another major source of the problem... Thoughts? Thanks, Sara

thanks fenton, forgive my ignorance, but i can't seem to get the scripts in the attached file to work properly. The third one (reading a pdf already in a container field) would actually be great, but when I try to run it, i get a message that the file cannot be created in that location, and then the applescript fails. I do have hopes for this pdftotext thing though because it is reading existing pdfs from my desktop really well. Any suggestions? Is the file you attached meant to work with a mac? I don't quite understand what I need to convert (Mac path<->Unix path<->FileMaker path....) I tried to change the field defs to exp to a folder on my desktop, but that didn't work either... please advise!

well as a really simple example, a custom function called Add that adds as many values as you want from unlimited fields. (The function I actually want to create is really complicated, and I'm not sure I can explain it very well...) I'm not sure what you meant by the multi-value parameter- where do you designate multi-value status? Thanks! Sara

Hi All, Is is possible to have endless parameters in a custom function (like there are in the Case function, for example)? Thoughts? Thanks!

Thanks everyone, I do have 8.5. I am just getting started today, but will try the container thing and the webviewer. Hey if the webviewer works, would it maybe be possible to scrape the contents of the pdf- so you could search the text of the doc? Is this possible any other way? The docs are contracts and I'd like to avoid using keywords in fields- I thought maybe I could somehow search the pdfs themselves...Ideas? I know this is in the wrong place, but it is related to my earlier question (kindof)... thanks! sara

I am trying to have FMP open a file from a server. The name of the file is contained in a field in each record. This should be simple, but I'm not sure how to go about it. Here's what I have: tell application "Finder" activate open "Shared Items:Agreements_scans:.pdf" end tell After the 2nd colon, before the .pdf, I need to insert the field contents of that record. How can I do this? I'm sure this is simple, I've just never worked with applescript before. Any advice would be great!

Thanks very much. (I was too lazy to add the pilcrows when I retyped the calc [and too lazy to copy/paste too], but we had them in there.) It sounds like you are saying we should use an auto-enter calc- that's the only place I can see to uncheck that box- what is the benefit of an auto-enter over our calc? Here is the copied/pasted calc we have: If ( DeleteFlg = 1 ; "" ; If ( Middle ( Itself ; ( Position ( Itself ; "*" ; 1 ; 2 ) + 1 ) ; ( ( Position ( Itself ; "," ; 1 ; 2 ) ) - ( Position ( Itself ; "*" ; 1 ; 2 ) + 1 ) ) ) = field ; Itself ; "*" & Middle ( Itself ; ( Position ( Itself ; "*" ; 1 ; 2 ) + 1 ) ; ( ( Position ( Itself ; "," ; 1 ; 2 ) ) - ( Position ( Itself ; "*" ; 1 ; 2 ) + 1 ) ) ) & ", *" & field & ", " & Get ( CurrentTimeStamp ) & ", " & Get ( AccountName ) & ", " & Get ( RecordID ) & ¶ & Itself ) ) The position stuff is just to get the old value of the field... ignore that.. We plan to fill in the deleteswitch after each export (to a new table) of all the old changes, so as not to have too long a field. Other thoughts or suggestions? Thanks again. sara

A group of amateur developers at the office came up with the following, and we think it is almost too good to be true, especially bc we've never read anything about this- except for a global calc posting in the forums a number of months ago. Here it is: We want to track certain fields, to follow when which user changes data in each, so we made a calculation for each such field that gets the value, gets the current timestamp and user, then skips a line, and references itself. You can only do this if you create the calc first so it shows up in the field list- then you can go back and add the self-reference. We were shocked fm allowed us to do this, but it is working exactly as we had hoped. Anyone have any thoughts- is this likely to corrupt our data or crash the system? The calc (FieldChange) looks like this if you are tracking a field called Name: Get (AccountName) & " " & Get (CurrentTimestamp) & " " & Name & "---------" FieldChange Obvious glitches? Things to consider? Thoughts? While I really hope everyone votes "genius", I'd way rather hear any nagging concerns you serious fm people have. Thanks! Sara

I am working with a team of novice developers to create a new solution for our organization. We have each been working on a couple of files every day, and then backing up to a hard drive at night. Things were going fairly smoothly, until I emailed a file to a coworker who wanted to add some calculations. When she emailed it back to me, the calc she added was nowhere to be found. I asked her about it, and she opened the file on her computer, only to find that the calc was not there either. Here's the kicker: the calc WAS in the external occurrance of the table she had in another database. When she restarted filemaker, all traces of the calc were gone. What could have happened? Is emailing filemaker files a bad idea? I am obviously concerned about corruption. Are there any diagnostics that we can run to determine if our db is corrupted? We have experienced unexpected crashes in a number of our databases- I don't want to put them up on the server if the crashes mean that there are corruption issues. Also, how can we possibly know if it is an issue of corrupted data or a structural problem... We've run the file maintenance options and (unfortunately, apparently) "recover" on a couple of these files... are there other fm or third party options? Thoughts? Advice? Help?! Any reponse would be greatly appreciated... Thanks very much!