I have a rather lengthy field which contains some formatted text. Since I don't have room on the layout to display the entire contents, and I have a locked down 800 x 600 screen size (no scroll bars), I need the user to be able to read the agreement by adding a scroll bar to the field.

The problem is that I have to allow entry into the field in order for the user to scroll and I don't want the text to be changed. I've tried changing it to a calculated field but then all text formatting is lost.

I've also tried placing an invisible box on top (leaving only the scroll bar available) with a script attached which bounces to an empty field, but the user can still get into the field once the've activated the scroll.

Any ideas?

Could you make the field take up the entire screen, turn field scrolling off, and have the user scroll through the text with the Filemaker scrollbar?

Make a calculated field = to the text field. Display calculated field with scroll bar.

There is an old trick. Validate the field, by calculation, 0, no overriding. Basically validation always fails, so the field can be entered, but never modified.

Thanks Fenton-you are an old hand at this!

Yes, I am an old hand; but many are older -) And it was someone else's trick, a well-known person, but I can't remember who. It's good for text that you're never going to change. But it's a pain otherwise; an unstored "duplicate" calculation field is better for text you change occasionally.

You can also use record level access to deal with this if your database has passwords. The access calc could allow editing on one layout, for instance, but not on others.