Sliding in 7 - ARRGGHHH!!!

[ricardito]

Have a solution that has two portals, one below the other, the second portal starts on the second page down. In 6 they slide up just fine as does everything below them so the result is nice and tidy (this spans 2 pages but seldom prints more than 1).

In 7 the items on the second page do not slide up at all, I only see the first page in preview and printed.

Has something changed and I'm missing it? I've checked and double checked everything, I'm reduced the portal rows and put everything on one page, works fine.

R

[ricardito]

This is on the Filemaker support site:

ISSUE:

The 'sliding objects' feature in FileMaker Pro can shrink field boundaries and shift layout objects left or up to close up the blank space caused when information in a field doesn't fill the defined field boundary. Sliding objects is designed to be used / viewed in Preview mode or when the data on a layout is printed.

In certain cases, objects set to slide may not slide as intended or may not display correctly when viewed in Preview or when printed. An example of this might be when text fields (or text blocks) are positioned between portals and displayed on a multi-page layout.

RESOLUTION:

Currently there is no workaround for this issue other than to avoid combining sliding text objects and portals on a multi-page layout.

FileMaker, Inc. is aware of this behavior in the products listed in this article.

I did a test of this without any text objects, only portals, and it won't work across multiple pages. This means that I have to limit the line items that can be purchased if I want the payments made below it. All portals must be on the first page to show.

[Vaughan]

Portals were never really designed for printing. The best practice is to go to the related records and print the report from there, using a list view layout.

[ricardito]

Thanks Vaughn. What I find troubling is that it works perfectly in 6 and not at all in 7.

[Vaughan]

This problem in more fierce in FMP 7. We can only wait in hope for FMP 8.

[ricardito]

My final word, this sucks! If I want to have a long list of line items purchased and then below that a payment history made on that invoice, I can't do it with portals, period. Even Vaughn's idea of going to the related file requires an extensive rewrite. I simply need a list of purchased items followed by a payment history, like I could in 6. As I said... ARRGGHHH!!

[ddreese]

You said it. I came on here looking for help why my FM7 layouts would just completely ignore a block of text (more like most of the blocks of text) on my layouts, they refuse to print! It's really obsurd.

Why can't they just copy what access can do and add a 'cangrow' attribute to fields. This sliding/printing thing is nothing but headaches, to put it as politely as I can.

[xochi]

I can confirm that Sliding is broken in FM7 with more than one portal.

However, I just tried it in FM8 and it appears to work somewhat better. The total page count decreases properly.

However, I'm not seeing individual portal rows shrinking in size, but I can't remember whether this worked in FM6 either...