Here's a tough one...

The brains at filemaker told me both on the phone AND in email that "of course the FMP Dev runtime supports Active X automation."

And that basically I was a fool for wanting confirmation...

Well, I buy it and develop my solution that requires another non FMP program to trigger scripts in Filemaker. (Filemaker then triggers srcripts in other programs with it's results)

The problem is, is that the Runtime does NOT support the active-x running of scripts...

Does anyone know of any way to be able to trigger scripts? Any plug-in ideas? Any way other then the way I'm doing now?

What I do now is have a control script under CTRL-1 in the Script menu. The external program brings up filemaker then sends a CTRL-1 keystroke, then enters in a code into the pop up dialog box then does it's job. The problem is is if Filemkaker runtime is minimized I have to send a RETURN to make it open up. Of course if it's already open it puts up that stupid "you can't type here" box requiring another keypress! If the person is in a field in filemaker it causes yet more grief. The only way I've found to make it work in all cases is pretty darn slow and ugly...

So I'm hoping to make it better and faster.

Thanks

TFM

I sometimes wonder whether those guys at FM are just plain stupid or a pack of liars hyping their product. You don't say what platform you're on, but I'm assuming Windows because of your use of CTRL.

WinBatch can automate running scripts. I have WB doing lots of things Filemaker can't do by itself (for example, bringing up the Windows desktop from within a kiosk). It's got lots of functionality for doing all kinds of things (dialogs, zipping files, popping up a mini-calendar, etc.) See www.winbatch.com

You could also create an FMP database that would run a script in another FMP file. This new file would run a startup script on opening (Edit, Preferences, Document...) that in turn, would run your target script(s).

Steve

Yes, I'm on Windows. Sorry.

I'm using VBA as my scripting language. It allows me to control word and any other apps that have active-x automation ports. My issue is controlling Filemaker Runtime from external non FMP programs.