AUTO-SIZING of portals or fields ? ? ? ?

[Jeff]

Is it possible to setup a portal to display the relating records so that the portal field will automatically expand or contract to how many records it displays? Or is there another type of field/solution i should use?

Hopefully i explained this right

[Jeff]

I failed to mention this is more for printing than anything (i know about the vertical scrollbar). Since i have to specify a fixed number of rows, some records won't have that many and some will have more.

Jeff

[BobWeaver]

In filemaker, things don't expand; they only shrink. So, you will have to initially size the portal to be big enough to handle the maximum number of portal rows that you will ever have to print. Then, set the portal to shrink and reduce enclosing part.

Note that the size of the individual rows within the portal won't change size, just the number of rows themselves.

Having said that, the best print option is to print directly from the related file where the portal gets its data from, rather than the parent file. Then you don't need portals on your print layout. You have much more flexibility this way, and there are hardly any situations where you need to be printing portals anyway.

[Jeff]

Thanks for the info Bob. Your right, there is no reason to print portals, i went back to the original data file and setup a summary report to get the effect i needed. There's always sliding/printing objects to get a similar effect, but isn't as affective.

-jeff

[TSilvan]

I don't have a problem with things contracting but not expanding (though I'd prefer it if they could do either) but it's a great pity that portal rows won't re-size. It's a real limitation.

Just about everything resizes, so why not portal rows!!?!

[jasonwood]

Yep... it's dumb, but unless you want more than 1 portal on one printing layout, it is better to print from line items anyway because it's easier to tweak the layout, especially if you are printing multiple pages.

[TSilvan]

Yep... it's dumb, but unless you want more than 1 portal on one printing layout, it is better to print from line items anyway because it's easier to tweak the layout, especially if you are printing multiple pages.

Maybe in Version 8 we will finally get resizing portal rows. My fingers are crossed.

Ted.