I'm trying to display multiple full, printable multi(15-20)-page documents in FileMaker.

Now, I realize that as opposed to copying and pasting the documents into FileMaker to print them, it would be more feasible to simply allow FileMaker to print them through their own file with a script, but I'm supposed to have them viewable (all 20 pages) in FileMaker.

It seems, however, that FileMaker has a maximum page limit of 11.

Is there a way I can properly display all 20 pages and print them from FileMaker?

Thanks a lot!

M

Just to be clear, the limit is just over 110 inches so you could have more pages if they aren't US Letter size or less if they are legal size. Your only choice for more pages (within FileMaker) is to use multiple layouts. This may or may not workout for you since you will need to print the first layout and then the second layout. If this doesn't work, you will need to consider mergin with a word processor.

Thanks, you're right, this won't work.

I'm going to have thousands of records, each referencing a different Word file. My original plan (as basic as it is) was to create a large text field and then simply cut and paste into it (this database will require a lot of data entry however it goes).

If I want to be able to reference a file for the pure reasons of printing and/or searching it, what would you suggest I do?

How would I go about merging with a word processor?

Thanks again,

M

You can export to Merge format but it sounds like you want something more automated. Someone else here may be able to better comment on automating with VB, XML or AppleScript.

Are you saying that right now the data is in thousands of Word documents? If so, you could store a filereference for each one (or just plop each into a container), and a text field with the contents pasted in. Then you could search by the text field and then open the related word doc.

If you wanted to display them natively in FM, you could create a calc that would display the text in single pages that you could scroll through by Middle(text;gPageNumber;gPageLength) where gPageNumber would be a global that you would increased by the total number of characters on a page of the word doc and gPageLength would be the total number of characters on a page(same principle could be done with middleWords, or middleValues, depending on the format of the data).

Chances are this would result in some format differences with the original word doc, but might be helpful.

Thanks both of you for getting back,

Yes, all of my data is in thousands of Word docs. I don't think now that I want to display them at all in FM due to the formatting problems that occur when I throw it in a text field (sorry for not being able to supply an example of one of these files).

I've never needed to use file references before. I'm going to look into them.

I'm not yet quite sure how to make/manipulate them, but if I run accross any problems, I'll be back.

Thanks a lot!

M