I want a button whose label and function change depending on the data: specifically, it goes from "Invalid" to "Make Valid", depending on and setting/emptying a timestamp field indicating when the data was known to be invalid.

Sounded like a job for a calculation field. So I made one that would evaluate to "Invalid" or "Make Valid" depending on my criteria, and planned to make the button text a merge of this field, and then put more or less the same logic in a script to determine what to do when it was clicked.

Well, when I put the merge field on the button, it does work. However, the name of the field is so long that Layout mode refuses to let me size the button as small as I want. It always sizes to fit the entire "text", and it's then ridiculously large when I get into Browse mode.

Obviously I could fix this by renaming the field to something much shorter, but I'll be danged if I'm going to break my naming convention for such a silly limitation.

It also appears that fields don't have this limitation, so I could insert it as a field instead and format it to look like a button. I tried this, but it seemed like I could not get the look exactly the same. The "pen" line would draw inside the embossing for the field, and outside the embossing for the button (which looks much better).

Am I missing something? Or is there a workaround better than those two?

This is an old trick: only the leftmost chevron (<) of the merge field has to be the desired size. The rest of the text can be sized as tiny as needed.

Wow, that's intuitive. But it did work. Thanks!