Getting graphics OUT of a container field.

[Kendall]

I apolgise if this has been talked about before (I did a search but didn't find what I needed.)

I have FM Pro Developer 5.5 running on OSX Server X.2.3. I have used a container field and have placed PDF, EPS, etc. files in it. They always show up in FileMaker just fine. However, how do I get the files back OUT of FileMaker. Drag and Drop just yields a picture clipping. I would really like to be able to store PDFs in there and get them back out again for other uses! The files need to be extracted on OSX, OS9 and Windows computers.

If anyone has an answer, please let me know. Thanks a lot.

Kendall

[SteveB]

A multi-page PDF document stored in a container is only 1 image. To do what I think you really want requires that each page of the PDF to be stored separately.

[Kendall]

No, they are just single pages...

The only way I can get them out of the containers is to drag and drop. Then all I get is a screen preview. I want to be able to get the PDF back out.

Kendall

[jfmcel]

Are the images stored internally in the FM database or are they references to files?

[jfmcel]

If you are storing the PDFs as references, getting the image out of FileMaker using AppleScript is trivial...

tell application "FileMaker Pro" to set TheImage to cell "Container" of current record

tell application "Acrobat Reader 5.0" to open file (TheImage as string)

If you have stored the images within FileMaker, it is possible, but a bit more involved, to get them out and saved as new files. With the method I am working on, you save the images as jpgs or picts, but not pdfs.