Editing multiple buttons simultaneously in Filemaker 19

[Fritz DeKatt]

This must be listed in a million places, but I can't find it. I know in the new Filemaker you have to hit tab to edit a button. What if you wanted to edit the graphics and styles on a whole bunch of buttons? You can't use tab and shift or command. If you do, it doesn't select all the buttons for editing. What's the trick? Let's say I have five buttons and they're all grey with black text. How do I make them all green with white text?

Thank you

fritz

[Ocean West]

Use themes and styles 

[Fritz DeKatt]

Does that mean the feature (doing an edit on multiple buttons simultaneously) has been removed?

[Ocean West]

Perhaps use the object panel and show only buttons then select all and adjust styles 

[Fritz DeKatt]

"Select All" selects everything on the layout (even though I've got buttons in the object tab selected) and ironically affects everything except the buttons. However, combining both your ideas, creating a style and using the object tab to subselect the button, works fine on individual buttons, though I've discovered that you can't select multiple buttons for editing since FM14 or so. Even so, applying styles to the individual buttons this way is many times more efficient than reassigning the same graphic elements to a whole pageful of buttons. I've never paid much attention to styles but, though circuitous, this speeds things up a lot.

Thank you very much for your suggestions,

fritz

[comment]

7 minutes ago, Fritz DeKatt said:

I've discovered that you can't select multiple buttons for editing since FM14 or so

I am not sure how exactly you "discovered" this, but it is not true:

 

21 hours ago, Fritz DeKatt said:

I know in the new Filemaker you have to hit tab to edit a button

I am not sure where you got this from either.

I suggest you read this carefully:
https://help.claris.com/en/pro-help/content/editing-objects-parts-background.html
https://help.claris.com/en/pro-help/content/working-with-layout-objects.html

 

 

[Fritz DeKatt]

There is no question that you can select multiple buttons (move them, delete them, etc), whether from the object panel or layout, but what you can't do (or I can't do with Filemaker 19 Mac) is change the graphics settings on multiple buttons at the same time. I should have specified, but my reply was in the context of my original question. 

I read that you can't edit the graphics of multiple buttons either in the community forum or fmsoup just this morning. I know I read it somewhere once when I noticed the problem after upgrading, and I started googling the subject this morning again.

Ditto for the 'tab' suggestion. I couldn't edit the graphics of a single button so someone online said you could hit the tab key when a button was selected and its graphic attributes in the inspector would be editable. I found this to be true. This was before I took your suggestion and tried the objects tab.

Thank you for the links. I did read both. I am reasonably familiar with these subjects, though I'm not a full-time Filemaker developer.

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[comment]

30 minutes ago, Fritz DeKatt said:

change the graphics settings on multiple buttons at the same time

I had no problem changing the fill color (for example)  of the selected buttons shown in the above screenshot all at once. I am using version 18. I am not aware of any changes in v.19 in this aspect.

 

39 minutes ago, Fritz DeKatt said:

I couldn't edit the graphics of a single button so someone online said you could hit the tab key when a button was selected and its graphic attributes in the inspector would be editable.

I think you may be talking about a grouped button. A grouped button has no graphic attributes of its own. If you press tab after selecting a grouped button, the selection changes to one of the objects in the group (typically a field) and you can then change its graphic settings. You can also use the Objects tab to select the grouped field directly. Or just click again inside the selection.

It is true that you cannot select simultaneously multiple fields from different groups. However, you can modify one of them and then replicate the changes to others using the Format Painter. Or, as suggested earlier, modify the style.

 

[Fritz DeKatt]

So, the behavior of my buttons is markedly different from yours. I have a customer who is using Filemaker 19 on Windows. It might be that this is just something peculiar to my installation. I will check with him and see if he has the same problem.

Since I now have a way to do it that's a lot less annoying than the method I was stuck with yesterday, I'm perfectly happy continuing to do it that way, selecting one or two styles for the buttons and leaving them that way if possible.

Thank you very much,

fritz

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[Fritz DeKatt]

Upon testing a few old layouts after getting your last note, I notice that on other layouts with other buttons, I can perform edits on multiple buttons just like you can.

The common denominator is that my uneditable buttons (about which I first asked) are all identified as "group" no matter how many times I ungroup them. If I create new buttons and assign them scripts, they work fine and are editable.

I did read somebody complaining about buttons marked as "grouped" that he couldn't ungroup, but there was no resolution I could see.

There's just something about these buttons. Oh well.

So everything works fine if I start with new buttons. An easy fix after all.

Thank you again for your time and effort,

fritz

[comment]

6 hours ago, Fritz DeKatt said:

my uneditable buttons (about which I first asked) are all identified as "group" no matter how many times I ungroup them.

FWIW, I looked at some of my older files, but I couldn't find such object. Could you post a file showing an example (and preferably nothing else)?

 

[Fritz DeKatt]

First I deleted all the buttons, then I revamped the layout. I didn't want this stuff hanging around because I often copy objects to use in other layouts. 

This is what I must have done (I read posts like this the other day also):

https://community.claris.com/en/s/question/0D50H00006ezLDoSAM/making-something-a-button-turns-it-into-a-group-so-it-cant-be-edited

I used to use objects as buttons all the time, but I didn't know they actually converted to buttons, just mimicked button behavior.

I don't do it any more, but parts of this layout were clearly copied from some other layout.

[comment]

14 minutes ago, Fritz DeKatt said:

This is what I must have done

I don't think so, because the result does not fit what you described earlier. If I define a rectangle as a button, the resulting object is:

and I have no problem ungrouping it and getting the original rectangle back. Or selecting the rectangle within the group and changing its graphic attributes. 

 

 

[Fritz DeKatt]

I will have to look at some layouts from different Filemaker applications to see if I find other examples of this problem. In this particular application, I don't see any, but there are a lot of old layouts I'm not using now. If I find one, I'll just copy the button to a new file so I don't have these buttons hanging around in a working app.

Thanks!

fritz

[coolcat]

On 1/16/2023 at 4:37 PM, Fritz DeKatt said:

The common denominator is that my uneditable buttons (about which I first asked) are all identified as "group" no matter how many times I ungroup them. If I create new buttons and assign them scripts, they work fine and are editable.

 

Yes I have the same issue. Quite cumbersome - I had to change them one at a time.

 

[Fritz DeKatt]

I was reminded by email:

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