Copy Layouts across files

[Steve Buchan]

I must be missing something ...

two files with tables and layouts .. attempting to consolidate them into one file. Table names and layout names are unique across the two files.

Is there a utility to copy layouts, table defs across files? How would one consolidate solutions?

thanks in advance,

Steve

[LiveOak]

The good news is that you can do both. For creating a single file with multiple tables from multiple files (on the PC) look at FM Robot from New Millennium Systems (www.newmillennium.com).

In layout mode (after converting to 7) you can either 1) cut and paste layouts to another file or 2) (Mac only) drag unlocked and selected layout objects to the desktop as a clipping and back to another layout.

-bd

[Deep Thought II]

this operation is still quite tedious to do... i really think FM should provide stuff like "Duplicate Table", "Import Table from File", etc., sort of thing.

it actually takes a while and it is pure labor if u want to duplicate a table or transfer one from another, provided that u dont pay $199+ for the tool mentioned above...

[Steve Buchan]

Ok thanks for the ideas. My Prior experience is working with Oracle 9i and Oracle's development tools .. and this capability is standard .. even for MS SQL Server. This being said .. I am very very impressed with all else Filemaker

We need to see Filemaker address this, perhaps in an augmented developers utilities.

Anyone else have great techniques to migrate layouts .. and tables??

[transpower]

Just clone the file and use that.

[Computer Geek]

I'm to cheap to shell out for the $199 method, primarily because I converted my solution before they posted their program. I wrote a script that gets most of the information on tables from the FM ODBC and creates the table via the ODBC in the target file. Worked great. The only fields that needed manicured were the calculated and summary fields.

As for the layouts, you can create a new, blank layout in the target file. Set the heading, body and footer to the exact measurments from the source file. After that, set the backgrounds of those parts. Once that is done, go to the source layout and from the edit menu, select all. Select copy and paste the objects in the target file.

Hopefully, some future version of FM does both of these things automatically for you.