PDF in Container Field

[Jason Goldsmith]

I have placed a pdf in a container field and see its icon. When I double click on the icon, nothing happens. How do I get the PDF to open? I did not select "store only a reference to the file"

Thank you

[John Mark Osborne]

You need to check "store as reference" when you import the graphic in order to double-click the PDF to open it. If you don't, you need to Export the Field Contents and then locate the PDF on the hard drive and double-click it. Clearly, storing as a reference is a good choice in this situation.

[Jason Goldsmith]

That worked, thanks John.

If a user is accessing the database via FM Server, and they submit content to a container field (PDF, image, etc), is the content on the server or on the user's hard drive?

[Genx]

If you don't choose "store as reference", it gets stored in the file on the server...

As per the file refernce i've never tried, but i'm not sure if it would work, as far as i understand it tries to point to a local file reference.

[Jason Goldsmith]

My goal is to have users submit content (PDFs and images) via FM server. I'd like the content to be stored on the server. Will users be able to click on the content and open it, or is it possible to script this? I don't have a copy of server to test this, and I fear developing the solution only to discover that my plan won't work.

Thanks!

[John Mark Osborne]

What you need to do is make sure the PDF documents reside on the file server where you want to store them before letting users add them to FileMaker. This will store the path where the files will be stored and not a path on the local users hard drive. It's also important to store the PDFs on a file server and not the FileMaker Server machine. Since file sharing should not be turned on for the FileMaker Server machine to prevent conflicts, the users will be able to mount the file server hard drive so they can see the PDFs stored in the database. If there is no path to the file server from the users machine, the referenced PDFs will not display.

[John Mark Osborne]

BTW, you can always update the path to the PDF documents with a script. You could use Set Field or Replace Field Contents to place a new path in the container field. In other words, if you inserted the PDFs and the path changes, you could write a script to keep the same file name but update the path. The script will require a calculation with some thought behind it but it is very doable.

[Jason Goldsmith]

My plan is to run Filemaker Server from my Dual G5 desktop at work. I may be in over my head, but there's no way to learn this except to jump in. Can I run server off a personal desktop? Do I need a separate server to store the images?

When a user runs the insert picture script step, they are asked to provide the path to the photo they want to insert, which most likely is on their PC. Once the photo is inserted, can I specify where a copy is stored. I think you answered this question, but I didn't quite understand.

Thank you,

Jason

[Jason Goldsmith]

Hi John,

I got my server running thanks to your assistance in another fmforum.

I now want to allow users to put their own photos (not PDFs for now) into container fields. You mentioned:

"What you need to do is make sure the PDF documents reside on the file server where you want to store them before letting users add them to FileMaker. This will store the path where the files will be stored and not a path on the local users hard drive."

My goal is to have users upload photos of their own in order to create test questions. Right now, I'm just using the Insert Picture script step with "Store only a Reference" turned off and "Specify Source File" turned off.

I am running FM Server trial version on my Mac Dual G5 desktop at work. This is a medical center building with an intranet. It's very PC centric. There are shared drives which have strange sounding PC names that I never use, as I use Dot Mac for file storage. However, maybe all photos could be uploaded to that site. Or to my Dot Mac site??

I could have users email photos to me, but that would not be a slick solution as the photos would not show up until later.

If I understood you correctly, there might be a way to script this. Thanks so much for your.

Jason Goldsmith

journeyman

Posts: 109

FMP: 8 Advanced

OS: Mac OS X Tiger

Skill: Novice