Question about sliding objects in FMP3.0

[laker_42]

We have a FMP 3.0 Db that contains some letters that we send out to our members. On the letter, there are 4 fields that are lined up vertically:

Date Display

Currency Display

Amount Literal, Amount Display

Not every letter has a value for the Currency Display field so we would like Amount Literal and Amount Display to slide up to take out the empty space. No matter what I try, I cannot get the fields to slide up. I wanted to test my logic so I created a new Db with the same fields. I lined up the fields in the same way and set the sliding options. I then previewed it and it looks like it should. Has anyone else experienced this where sliding won't work in their current Db but will work in another new Db? If so, how did you resolve it? Can we resolve it without recreating the Db from scratch?

We have made several changes to the layout. Moving fields around and resizing certain fields. It seems like my experience with FMP has been that the more changes you make, the less chance you have of objects on the layout lining up correctly or printing out correctly. It seems like FMP has a limit to the amount of changes that you can make and still have everything work correctly. This is very frustrating to me. Am I the only person that this happens to???

If you have any info that would help, I would really appreciate it.

Thanks!

John

[LiveOak]

The most likely reason is that you have some invisible object that is not set to slide. Try doing a select all in layout mode and see if anything shows up. Also check the sliding/printing dialog and make sure the settings are correct.

-bd

[laker_42]

I tried that and there were no other invisible objects on the layout. Also, I tried every combination of options that are available in the sliding menu. None of them worked.

Thanks,

John

[The Bridge]

I noticed recently in FMP 5 that if a field's vertical formatting is set to center or bottom, sliding does not work as expected.

Other than that, you might want to pursue LiveOak's suggestion one step further: make sure that there aren't any invisible elements that are grouped to visible elements. As long as they are within the bounds of the objects they are grouped with, they will not appear using Select All.

Good luck!

[laker_42]

I did check to make sure that the text is aligned at the top & left. So that shouldn't be creating a problem for me. None of the objects are grouped so if there were invisible objects they should show up with the select all. I looked & did not find any invisible objects. Any other ideas what I could try to get these to slide correctly without recreating the DB in a new file?

Thanks for the help so far!

John

[The Bridge]

Have you tried recreating the layout within the same file? That would at least save you the trouble of recreating the whole database. Other than that, I'm out of ideas. Best of luck!

[laker_42]

Yeah, I tried that. I was hoping that something that simple would solve it but it didn't. The only solution that I could come up with was creating a new file.

Thanks for the help!

John