You guessed it: Printing Portals, and lots of them

[falkaholic]

I just inherited an interesting project.

One of the things it does is bring out a 1 to 8 page report.... Using about 20 portals. The good thing is that the author made most of portal share one lineitems database (using dynamic keys method, and not using all fields) so in theory I could print from the line items, but there portals from other databases. so it won't be easy.

As well, the author made it so if the portals are empty, they do not print (and shorten the report). I havn't really figured out how he pulled this off. I think he is using print sliding. Almost everything in the print layout is a calculation the is something like:

If(IsEmpty(field), "", "Total Sales: ")

I guess this helps sliding the portals up etc.

Since I grew up being told that printing portals is a faux pas, I want to cut 100+ calculatioin fields, and to have more control over layout; I want these portal gone. Anyone got an idea on how to handle this? Leave them?

[trevorg]

Wow. How long has the report been in use? Are they complaining about any aspect of it?

Even though it might not be ideal, the rule, "If it isn't broke, don't fix it" might apply.

[LiveOak]

When doing a lot of sliding, you have to use calculated labels for empty fields or the labels themselves will appear with no data next to them. If you make the labels disappear when there is not data in the corresponding field everything left can slide up further.

-bd

[marianne]

Just out of curiosity, why is printing portals a faux pas? I'm working on a report right now, and I have to use many portals to display the information, and perhaps to print them.

Oh dear.... Now I'm all nervous about this. How do I work around this issue? I'm a FM newbie, so I'm not sure how to display this information without using a portal.

Thanks!

[trevorg]

If your portal contains more data than there are rows when you print them, the "extra" data is not printed.

Imagine an invoice where a scrolling portal was used which only showed 10 line items on screen, but the customer bought 15 items. They would only see the first 10!

[marianne]

but if you only have two records in many portals, that's okay, yes? and I can adjust later if more records are added.

The number of records is controlled, so there will be no surprises (at least I hope not!).

I just want to make sure that I'm not doing something that's going to be a disaster later on.

[Vaughan]

Sliding printing within portal rows does not work.

I recently fixed a report where filled rectangles in the portal went all weird. it night have been printer driver realated, but the monemnt I removed all filles it worked perfectly.

They are something to be avoided, else used carefully!

[BobWeaver]

I think earlier versions of Filemaker had more problems when printing portals. As I recall, FM3.0 did a lot of unpredictable things with portals that seem to be fixed in later versions.

There definitely are some situations where printing portals is a lot easier than trying to print from the line items file (such as a multi-record report where the portal relationship is based on a multi-key).

Regarding sliding/shrinking of portals: while the individual rows within the portal won't shrink, the unused rows won't be printed. So, you can size the portal to have many more rows than you actually need, and set them to shrink.

I've only set up a couple of applications where I print portals, and they have both been for my own use. So, if they screw-up it's nobody's problem but my own.

Advice: Test thoroughly!

[falkaholic]

Thats good to know,

I've had a compliant that it isn't printing all the records, since one of the portals is full. I was worried, but looks like i can just jack up the rows and it should be ok.