Different Printing Layouts

[Sintax]

I am just now starting to play around with this but I thought if I asked the question now that someone might be able to save me some time.

Here is the setup: Lets say I have a FM database for my music collection. In each record there is a place where you have Album Art displayed (in a container field).

For one I would like to be able to display the Album Art, title and artist. I know how to do that but what I am wanting to do is instead of having just one tiny record per page, how can I get it to print say 3 rows with 4 records per row?

It seems to only want to print one record per page which isn't very big and wastes a lot of paper if you are printing out your entire catalog.

What I am looking for is something like if you were to lay out rows of baseball cards on a sheet of paper. Each record (containing the image and data) would be one baseball card.

Any ideas?

Version: v7.x

Platform: Mac OS X Panther

[Ender]

In Browse Mode, select View->View as List. This will show more than one row per page. If you want columns too, enter layout mode, then select Layout->Layout Setup, check the box for Print In Columns and enter the number of columns.

--Mike

[Ender]

In FileMaker 7, the Layout Setup dialog box has this option on the Printing tab.

--Mike

[Sintax]

So is this something I can permanently set up for a layout so when I lock down the database in Developer it will always print like this (for that particular layout)?

[Ender]

Yes. These settings are part of the layout. The only thing you should be aware of is the Page Setup. You will need to include a Page Setup [Restore, No Dialog] script step to make sure the orientation, scale, and Print settings are preserved for each report.

--Mike

[Sintax]

I saw a "Print Setup" in script maker but not a "Page Setup" in that list of options on the left. Do you know what section it would be under?

[Sintax]

OK, I got everything working now except when I go to print a single record, it wants to print each and every one of them! On the Browse Layout screen it is fine (the correct record is the only one). On the Preivew Layout screen it starts with the first record and lists them all to print!

I am printing in "Form View" so there shouldn't be a problem, right?

[Sintax]

Well I solved the visual aspect of that by showing the record in Browse mode... not Preview. But it is still only printing either the first record in the database or ALL the records. It won't single out the one I want for some reason!

[-Queue-]

As long as your Print Setup is saved with a Print script that is set to only print the current record, then you are okay. If more than one record is found, then all of them will show in Preview Mode, but only the current one will be printed. Note that the Print Setup only determines orientation, printer, etc., and not the type or amount of records to be printed. That isn't known until the Print step is executed, which would occur after your preview.

If you find having all records showing when you only want to print one a problem, then you can do a Go to Related Records [show, self-id] step before previewing, where self-id is a relationship from the record's serial number to itself. The drawback is that you lose your found set unless you save the ids for all found records into a global first, which won't work if you have a very large number of records due to FM's 64k character limit in text fields.

A couple of alternatives are not to preview a single record unless it's absolutely necessary or store the current record number in a global, enter preview mode and go to record/request/page based on the global, then hide and lock the status area before pausing to let the user view it. This won't work, however, if a single record takes up more space than a single page when printed.

Others probably have more suggestions or alternatives.

[Sintax]

As long as your Print Setup is saved with a Print script that is set to only print the current record, then you are okay. If more than one record is found, then all of them will show in Preview Mode, but only the current one will be printed.

In Browse Mode, only the one record is shown. In Preview mode, it shows 2 records per page. When I print from the Browse Mode (where it only shows one record) it still prints them all.

Do I specify to only print the current record in a Script Maker script or something?

[-Queue-]

Yes, that's why I specified the Print step being set to print the current record. You need to manually perform the print and then open the script, close it, and select the radio button to 'Replace' the print settings.

[-Queue-]

Whoops! I didn't see that this was for 7. In that case, you set your setup and print settings in the script. Just click the 'Specify Print Options' button or box.

[Sintax]

Well this is what my "Print Script" is doing but I still can't get it to work. What am I missing?

New Window [...]

Go to Layout ["Print - Overview One" (database)]

Allow Toolbars [Off]

Show/Hide Status Area [Hide]

Show/Hide Text Ruler [Hide]

Set Zoom Level [100%]

Enter Browse Mode []

Print []

Should there be a step AFTER the "Print []"? I can't find any options for only printing the current record.

Just click the 'Specify Print Options' button or box.

That only lets me select to print One Page or All Pages. If I select On Page then it still starts at the first record and prints on page from then on.

[Ender]

In FM6: You must manually perform the Page Setup from the File menu, then manually perform a Print from the File menu. In the Print Dialog box, go to the FileMaker options and choose to print the current record or all records. Then go to your script and add the Page Setup [Restore, No Dialog] script step before the Print[] step.

In FM7: You can simply add a Page Setup [No Dialog] script step before the Print[] step, click on the checkbox for Specify page setup and set the page orientation and zoom. Then on the Print[] script step, hit the Specify print option checkbox and select the print options for FileMaker, then choose to print the current record or all records.

--Mike

[Ender]

Hey, so does this mean we can specify more than one Page Setup option in one script?? That will be cool...I must test...

--Mike

[-Queue-]

Ender, yes, I believe the number of storable Setup and Print steps is now infinite...

Sintax, click the Specify button on the Print step. Click the drop-down menu at the top next to the 'Print' label and change it to read 'Current Record'.

You're probably going to want a Print Setup step before 'Print' to specify Portrait, etc. Otherwise, if 7 behaves like its predecessors in this manner, it will use the last activated Print Setup instead, which may definitely not be what you want.