Hi all,

My first experience with FM is really good and I was able to work myself without the help of any guide or book towards a solution required by my employer. I just can't figure out something...

I have created a layout, a standard letter containing multiple merge fields. However, I would like to edit these letters in BROWSE mode to be more flexible, edit it directly and then print away. I know that this is not possible, but editing in LAYOUT mode gives me a headache since one cannot see the final outcome without switching back and forth with BROWSE or PREVIEW mode. I also tried copying the text in PREVIEW mode to edit in MS Word, but it is copied as an image not as text.

There must be an easy solution but I suppose I'm just not seeing it.

Hope someone can help me out here,

Thanx!

The usual method for user-editable letters is a separate layout with a Body text field that users type in, then on the Print layout, have the addresses, Dear Whoever, Body, and salutation as merge fields in a text object. A print button on the Edit screen can run a script that goes to the Print layout, previews the record for the user, then optionally prints and returns to the Edit screen.

This works fine unless users want to use record data within the body of the letter itself. For this look at these two options:

Use a calculation to look at the user entered Body field and replace <<Merge Fields>> with corresponding field data. It uses a substitute function, like this:

ResultText(calculation, text result) =

Substitute(BodyText;

["<<Name>>"; Name];

["<<Company>>"; Company])

I have also developed a more flexible custom function that can do this for any field or user-entered calculation. But you'd need Dev7 to get it into your solution.

Note: use caution with my FieldSubstitute() custom function, as it could allow users to access data they should not see.