Printing Portals

[AudioFreak]

Hello all,

I'm having a slight problem printing portals. All the text prints just fine in the portal. The problem is that the lines between the portal rows are being cut off. At the ends of the portal you can see a little bit of the lines but in the center of the portal it's blank. The first portal row is ok it's only the rows after that that print without the lines. Please help Ias I have a customer that is ready to use this database and this is the only thing keeping this from being used. any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

[Lee Smith]

You should print your reports from the file containing the data, not the portal.

Lee

[AudioFreak]

Hi Lee,

The portal is a purchase order report that is related by the Po#. It is a self relationship. Is there a better way to get the info onto the Po report without using a portal.

Michael

[Razumovsky]

While I agree with Lee in principle, I know there are times when portals need to be printed as well.

I remember having a problem like this before. Try some of these troubleshooting ideas:

1. resize the portal rows a bit taller

2. set the fields in the portal to be transparent

3. try printing it on a different printer

4. does it look ok in preview mode?

5. make sure that the lines for the portal are set to be black and 1 pt.

6. delete all but one field in the portal (on a dup copy of course)- do the lines extend any further?

try each of these individually, they may offer a clue as to what is going on.

your field boundaries could be interfering with your portal lines.

-Raz

[AudioFreak]

Raz,

1) I did try that. Even made the fields much smaller then the portal. Did the same thing.

2) The fields are transparent.

3) This is my next step(but I don't think it will help because it was working fine at one point).

4) It looks fine in browse and preview mode.

5) I will try this one.

6) I also tried this. Redid all the fields and the portal same result.( Even with one field in the portal it still does this. The strange thing is that under the second portal row only half the field has the line between the portal row.

Thanks for your suggestions. Any other thoughts on this?

Michael

[Razumovsky]

Okay-

I definitely agree with Lee in this case.

I think many people would recommend that you consider splitting the data into 2 files: PO# and POLineItems related PO#:PO#

PO would hold the PO#, vendor info, history, order date etc..

POLineItems would hold data for each item ordered in seperate records.

you would print via report in POLineItems (go to related records (show))

Put the PO# and vendor info via related fields in the header.

you could do the same for your current setup- just go to all selfjoin related records and print as list report.

Short reply- but can provide more info if you are confused.

-Raz

[AudioFreak]

Raz thanks for your input. I have never had a problem printing portals until now. Is it possible to remove the lines between each record in the portal? This would be an acceptable compromise if possible.

Michael

[Razumovsky]

Sure-

Set lines on portal to none, or to same color as background.

Some reasons why you might reconsider using a portal for this:

-What happens when the # of PO items exceeds the # of portal rows?

-What happens when the portal size exceeds a single page?

-What happens when you want to slide objects in a portal row?

-What happens when you want subsummary info in report?

There are probably more issues as well.

BTW- you are on PC, I presume from the printing problems?

-Raz

[Ugo DI LUCA]

OK,

Let me admit that I just stopped printing portals 2 months ago when I finally switched to the new db I had developped.

In the first time, for Invoice, PO, Customer Order and Quotes, I used to get a Count(:Line Item) to determine which layout to use, as I had 12 sets of portal ready to use, for the PO for example (3 by number of items, and 4 Purchaser categories (Italian, French, Spanish or German).

It obviously wasn't an ideal solution when the portal was to be printed in more than 2 pages, but with some work on the layout, I had it working for more than 3 years like that with no issue at all.

One thing in favour of Lee's suggestion. When t year-end, my accountant needed a reprint of all the Invoices, I got totally stuck with the loop script.

Definitely, print related records raher than portals...

[AudioFreak]

Thanks for all the input. I'm going to reconsider whether I should use portals or NOT. Is it correct that with the Po Form. I will need to put all the info such Bill to, Ship to......etc in the header? The layout will be a list view. Then print the records in list view. If this is correct I can see the advantage to doing this this way. Thanks for all the help.

Michael

[Razumovsky]

In the PO systems I developed, I use 3 Files:

Contacts

PO

POItems

All vendor specific info is stored in contacts (Ship to, addres, fax#, etc)

All PO Specific info is stored in PO (PO#, PO Date, bill to, etc)

All POItem specific info is stored in POItems (Quantity, Item name, Part #, Barcode, Dimensions, Description, etc...)

Everything is entered from the PO file through related fields, pull down lists, and portals. For example:

select "Bob's Tire Shop" for vendor name

(automatically lookup vendor hidden ID for relational match to contacts, displays Bobs contact info in related fields)

Enter items in portal below based on POID(HiddenUniqueID):POID from PO to POItems (allow creation of related records)

Yes, the PO itself is printed from POItems with related contact and PO info in title header (list view).

You can also relate an Inventory file to POItems so that you can have conditional value lists pop up in PO entry to stream line the data entry process.

There are probably dozens of posts on this subject in greater detail. try searching:

Purchase orders

conditional value lists

inventory

HTH

-Raz

[AudioFreak]

You have more then answered my questions. I really never thought about taking that approach due the fact all my list views are set as a table which would not look very elegant on a purchase order form. Thanks for the help . I now have some extra work to do. . Thanks again.

Michael

[AudioFreak]

RE: BTW- you are on PC, I presume from the printing problems?

Yes it is a PC with the problems. The files were originally created on a Mac and transfered to a PC. On the Mac all is good, The PC...........

[AudioFreak]

Well all the portals are gone and the customer is happy. I would like to thank everyone in this thread for the advise given.