Line Items not printing

[The Mad Jammer]

OK, I'm not getting this whole printing thing. I've tried this six ways from Sunday but haven't gotten it to work yet.

I have a file of items and each item can have any number of charge records associated with it. It's very similar invoicing where you have line items.

So if I define a columnar report with grouping bsed on the "Items" file and use Item Number as the group field, I only get the first record in the Charges file to show up in the body of the report. If I setup a report based on the Charges file and use the associated Item Number as the group field, I get all of the Charge records but the report does not start a new page when the Item Number changes.

I've tried using the Item Number field from the Items file as the group field but to no avail.

Any ideas?

Thanks

The Mad Jammer

[Vaughan]

In the first report, you probably need to include the Body part, so each individual records prints.

In the second report, double-click on the sub-summary part and check the option to put a page break before each occurrance.

[The Mad Jammer]

Vaughan,

The body part WAS included in the first report and I the Page Break field was already set in the second report. That's why it's so confounding.

Got tired of fighting with it and simply created a new report for the Charges table using the item number as the group field. Everything started off just fine, I was seeing all the charge records for each item number and the page break was even working. I added other fields from the the Items table to the report to fill it out and added a footer for some other Items table fields. Checked it out in preview mode, it looked great and I got my hopes up only to be dashed against the rocks. When I printed a single page of the report, only the first charge record was printed even thogh there are 5 or 6 charge records being displayed. Even the footer information was printed. But the other charge items didn't print and neither did the total, which was being displayed in preview mode. What the !(&@#&@^*(^!@(%(!@%^? Ready to kill now.

And I can't get the charges and cost portals to add records either. It will display the records it already has but won't allow me to add a new one. Where did they hide the "Add releated records" checkbox?

And another thing, if I preview several records, print one and select "Current Record" from the print dialog, it prints the first record of the set even though I'm previewing another record. What's that all about?

The Mad Jammer

[Vaughan]

Us the file FMP 7? Mashe sure it's updated to 7.0v3 at least.

[The Mad Jammer]

Using 7.0v1 OEM version. Can I even get the update?

the Mad Jammer

[Vaughan]

Download it form the FMI web site. It's free.

Dunno what you mean by OEM version... did you buy it from eBay?

[The Mad Jammer]

Vaughan,

This is getting depressing. I upgraded to 7.0v3 but still have the same problem. Now I see that one of my other reports, which was working OK yesterday, refuses to display the group fields in either preview mode or when printing. This was a significantly more difficult report to construct simply because there are 5 break levels to the report that I must contend with.

And why can't the layout remember the print setup when it is defined? This particular report was in landacpe mode, but when I opened it up to look at it, it was in portrait mode again. You'd think... I don't know if that screwed up the group headers or not, all I know is a beautiful report now looks like so much garbage and I suspect i'll have to redo it.

the Mad Jammer

[Vaughan]

You ned to tell FMP what to do...

The Print setup step not only remembers the page size and orientation, it also remembers whether to print the current record or the found set. So all up you'll probably need a minimum of four scripts. Assuming you use US Letter, I'd call them...

Print Setup US Letter Tall Current Record

Print Setup US Letter Tall Found Set

Print Setup US Letter Wide Current Record

Print Setup US Letter Wide Found Set

Each script consists of just one step: Print setup [ restore, no dialog ]. You need to set the Print Setup, then Print using the current record or found set option, then create the script (or edit the script and choose to update the saved setting).

Now every time you print a report, call the required Print Setup script.

Since you are generating a summary report, you also need to make sure the records are correctly sorted before previewing or printing the layout. The sort order need to include every break (sub-summary) field in the order they appear on the layout from top to bottom.

Create a script that saves this sort order.

Every time you need to generate the report, run another script...

Go to Layout [ report layout ]

Perform Script [ Print Setup US Letter Wide Found Set ]

Perform Script [ Sort by Field1, Field2, Field3, Field4 ]

...and it'll work every time.

[Søren Dyhr]

So if I define a columnar report with grouping bsed on the "Items" file and use Item Number as the group field, I only get the first record in the Charges file to show up in the body of the report.

Sorry for asking silly, but when you in layoutmode ....double click on the body mark to the left ...are any checkboxes in the dialog arriving ...such as the "Page break after every ...." set???

--sd

[The Mad Jammer]

Vaughan and Soren,

I've checked off the "Page Break before" and when that didn't work I checked off the "Page Break after" as well, to no avail.

As I keep working with columnar report layouts I find that FMP is very sensitive about where the break lines are. I solved one of my problem reports by decreasing the size of the footer a little. As a result the line items started showing up and when I set the printer to Print Records Being Browsed and Pages 1 to 1, I actually got the thing to print correcly.

However, I still cannot get my multi level report to display the group levels. I thought that if I started changing the size of the subsummary part it would help. So expanded the size of all the subsuammry parts and it didn't make a bit of difference. Then I contracted the size of the body part just a little and the lowest level subsummary field was again displayed. Bouyed by this I tighened up all the subsummary parts but none of the other subsummary fields are being displayed. This is just strange behavior. The subsummary fields are placed directly in the middle of their respective subsummary parts but they don't show up on the report no matter how big the subsummary is. Very strange.

the Mad Jammer

[The Mad Jammer]

I've been working off and on with this issue and seem to have finally resolved it for this situation.

Thanks for your help