Path to db in network

[BertBoye]

I have a solution that is sending out email with attachments and I am using the following to determine the path to the bd.

Substitute(Substitute(Substitute(Substitute(Middle(Status(CurrentFilePath), 8, 64000), Status(CurrentFileName), "pdf/"),"/Programs",""), "/", Case(Abs(Status(CurrentPlatform))=1, ":", ""))&""&Substitute(RightWords(P2:_DisplayName, 1)," ","")&Left(P2::_DisplayName,1)&invoivenumber&"_"&send_type&".pdf", ",","")

But when I use the solution in a network are the path not recognized. In Mac os X are the path *,filename.pdf. and not the full path to the file on the network. On a PC did we solve the problem by making a shared folder where the whole solution was running from and all files are saved in the same folder.

Any of you Mac people that know how to fix this.

Bert

[underhat]

Hi Bert,

First of all, it sounds like you may be networking these files in a manner which is not recommended by FileMaker Inc., and which can lead to corruption troubles down the road. It sounds like you have a shared folder with the FileMaker files; everyone is connecting to this shared folder, and opening the files. Is this right?

The reason this isn't recommended, and can lead to file corruption, is that when you do this you have many FileMaker programs (one on each computer) writing to the same "physical" files. Each copy of the program has no way of telling what the other ones are doing, so two or more of the FileMaker programs might try to write different things to the same part of the file at once, for example. Remarkably, this sort of setup seems to be more robust than I'd expect, but I've heard many reports of files becoming corrupted after some time.

The recommended way of networking files is to use FileMaker's built-in networking. If you open a file and go to the File menu, and select Sharing, you'll see that you can set a file to be Multi-User. What you want to do is turn on that option in all the files. (The main file, the one that people open first, should be Multi-User, and the other files should be set to Multi-User Hidden.) Then, you have ONE computer that opens the "physical" files -- this is the "host" computer. The other computers, or "guests", connect to the files as following. Run the FileMaker program, go to the File Menu, and select Open. In the Open File dialog box, there's a button called "Hosts". If you click that, you should see the main file (the one that you didn't set hidden), and be able to select it.

The reason that FileMaker networks this way is that only the copy of FileMaker running on the host computer is ever writing to the files; the other computers relay their requests through the FileMaker program running on the host computer.

Now, as to sending attachments, I need a little more information. Are these attachments stored in a central location on the network, or are they local to different people's computers? It sounds like you want them stored in a central place on the network where everyone can access them.. correct?

[BertBoye]

Thanks for the brief on FileMaker networks, this is not the problem. The problem is that filemaker does not recognize the path to the database, Filemaker is replacing the path with wildcard(*). Yes all attachments are to be stored on one location were all users in the Filemaker network can find them, but since Filemaker does not recognize the path can we not attach