Creating a sidebar report

[Brudderman]

How can I produce a report in this sort of format where I have subsummaries for Contest, Year and Candidate:

Contest 1

......Year 1......Candidate 1

......................Candidate 2

......................Candidate 3

......Year 2......Candidate 1

......................Candidate 2

Contest 2

Etc.

In other words, I'd like for the first candidate to appear on the same line as the year instead of beginning on a new line as is typical. It's also possible that I'd eventually want the first unique occurrence of each contest, year and candidate to appear on one same line as well instead of breaking to separate lines.

Thanks!

James McAlister

www.BulletinInserts.org

www.james-mc.com

[Sanjai]

You are summarizing the fields by Contest and Year. You cannot keep the body and summary field in the same row. However, you can create a calculation field based on a relationship using Year, such that the the first record matching should result in Year & Candidate and all the subsequent records should result showing the Candidate.

In your report, you can remove the year field from the summary section and keep it empty. In the body section add the new calculation field which would show Year & Candidate for the first record in the same line.

[netbuilder]

Another technique is to take advantage the fact that Filemaker associates a field with a report 'part' based only on where the top edge of the field is located. Specifically for your case, the subsummary field Year does not have to be contained entirely within the subsummary part, only have it's top edge located there. This allows simulating the effect you want by creating a 1-pixel-high subsummary part with the Year field positioned just touching it but dropping mostly down into the body part. Enlarge the Year field and use bottom-aligned text to achieve baseline alignment with the rest of the body text.

[Brudderman]

I'll have a look at this. Nobody would probably ever notice the 1-pixel offset.

[Brudderman]

I did try this with the 1-pixel offset and it works OK--hardly noticed it.

Thanks to all who helped.

James

[netbuilder]

James, If you perform the steps I mentioned in my previous post -- enlarge the field (vertically by one pixel for instance) and then set text to bottom alignment -- your sidebar text will share the same baseline as the body text. There will be no 1-pixel offset to notice.

[Brudderman]

James, If you perform the steps I mentioned in my previous post -- enlarge the field (vertically by one pixel for instance) and then set text to bottom alignment -- your sidebar text will share the same baseline as the body text. There will be no 1-pixel offset to notice.

Yes, you are right! This is much easier to understand than the method I have been trying to use. Thanks!

James