Cross platform file references

[bars]

Hi,

Working on a solution hosted with FM Server where the goal is to place Excel spreadsheets in a Filemaker container field and be able to launch Excel and open placed spreadsheets from the Filemaker database.

This is do-able placing Excel file as a reference into a container field and just double-clicking on it, BUT...the problem I'm having is that this site runs Filemaker Pro on macs and PCs. If the Excel file is placed from a mac client, then the file reference is filemac:/VOLUME/path - so ONLY mac Clients can open that file refence. Conversely, the files placed into containers from Windows clients have a filewin://COMPUTER/VOLUME/path reference format and cannot be found by the macs.

Is there any solution to this (e.g. way to concatenate the filewin and filemac path references for the container field, or a plug-in)?

Thanks.

[Dan-A]

I'm not sure I follow all but....

Could you use a "Get" function to get the system platform of the current user

and then branch your script from there.

[bars]

Thanks for the suggestion. I was going to try that route, but I think I found an easier(?) solution.

1) Create the container field where referenced files can be placed from either platform (but file path references are platform specific)

2) Create a calculation field that gets as text the first Container field, parses out the actual file path (starting with volume/share name), then concatenates that information into a valid file reference format:

file: filename

filemac:/volume/rest-of-path

filewin://computer-name/volume/rest-of-path

This was all done using various text functions (Position, Middle, Left, etc.) and using the Let function to create internal variables.

Make sure you set the calculation results to be a Container.

This will give you a second container field with a valid file reference for either platform. So the files can be placed from a mac or PC and can then be double-clicked on from a mac or PC and launched.

- Bars

[Nelliedk]

Bars - could you please explain further the text functions used? I've made the calculation field, but haven't figured out how the text functions create the internal variables.