Page Margin Bug With PDFs

[James E. Talmage]

FM's bug reporting page seems to not be working.

Thought someone here might have insight on this problem:

When using Save Records as PDF, Layouts which have Facing Pages option turned on produce incorrect page margins on all pages after page 1.

1. Create a new empty file. Define one field and set it as auto-enter serial number.

2. Switch to Layout Mode. In Layout Setup, Printing pane, turn on Use Fixed Page Margins option. Set all four page margins to 1 inch. Turn on the Facing Pages option.

3. From the View menu, select Object Size to open the Size palette. Also from the View menu, turn on Page Margins.

4. With the Rectangle Tool, draw a horizontal rectangle. In the Size palette, set the rectangle's left position to 1 inch. Set its width to 6.5 inches. (The rectangle's width now spans from left margin to right margin.)

5. Switch to Browse Mode. Create four new records.

6. Switch to Preview Mode. File>Save Records as...PDF. Save the file as "Margins_A.pdf." Turn on the Automatically Open option, so the resulting PDF opens in Acrobat or Reader.

7. In Acrobat or Reader, page through the file. Note that the rectangle is turncated on all pages except page 1.

8. Return to FileMaker. Enter Layout Mode. In Layout Setup, Printing page, turn off the Facing Pages option.

9. Switch to Preview Mode. File>Save Records as...PDF. Save the file as "Margins_B.pdf." Turn on the Automatically Open option, so the resulting PDF opens in Acrobat or Reader.

10. In Acrobat or Reader, page through the file. Note that the rectangle is now the same size on all pages.

The page margins display properly in Preview Mode, but they are incorrect in the resulting PDFs. I know of no workaround other than to simply not use the Facing Pages option--not a very good option when needing to export PDFs for printed manuals.

[xochi]

8.0v3 is supposed to fix some page margin problems, but it's not yet released: http://filemaker.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/filemaker.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=5907

[Daniel T.]

I have this exact problem in Filemaker 11 on Mac. I'm wondering if anyone can recommend a solution?

I have a suspicion it has to do with sliding elements on the (somewhat complex) layout.

When I do File > Save/Send Records As... > PDF, I get the weird margins (whole layout shifts over about an inch to the right), but if I do File > Print... and then Save to PDF using OS X's built-in print to PDF function, then the result looks as expected.