This may just be a short coming of filemaker's features, but I thought I'd ask.

Is it possible to have a layout or part of a layout that will lengthen and shorten itself based on the amount of data in a field?

Some records I use have 30 lines of text while others have only 5. It would be great if I didn't have to use space on the paper when I print for 30 lines of text even though every record doesn't use 30 lines.

Any thoughts?

Mmmmmno, not really.

Unless you were to seperate each line into a seperate related record during data entry and then produce a report like that. Though this seems to take you back to the dark ages of the type writer, having to press enter to start a new line etc. etc. etc.

~Genx

... Though then again, you could attempt to reparse the text into related records before printing, but then you are going to be length guessing.

Well, thanks for the confirmation.

I'm a newbie when it comes to FMP as well, and I've only ever used FMP 8, so perhaps this doesn't apply to v7, but there is a feature called "sliding" that I believe does what you want. It causes the field boundaries of a text field to shrink and expand based on the amount of text in a field.

There is a fairly good explanation of it in the book I'm reading ('The Missing Manual' one by O'Reilly), but this page at FileMaker.com also explains it.

http://www.filemaker.com/help/06-Create%20and%20manage42.html

If this doesn't do what you're talking about, maybe someone can explain to me what it does, since that's how I understood it.

Hope it helps!

That's great Kadin! That sounds like exactly what I'm looking for. I'll check it out.

God i hate sliding, i think i'll read up on it though, thanks for the pointer kadin.

Hahahaha, i never even realized it could be done with layout parts. Sigh, what a waste of my life. Oh well, off to adjust things now.

Cheers,

~Genx

I can't seem to get the sliding to work. Am I missing something. I shrink my field to the size I'd want it at minimum and then select it add go to sliding. The option already looks selected so I hit ok and go to preview mode and the text in that field is still cut off.

Try setting it to the maximum size, it will then slide up to the size required. Also, I believe the layout part needs to be brought up snug with the bottom of the lowest object in the part if you want the part to shrink as well.

-Raz

Still doesn't seem to change anything. I must be missing something.

You mean that you are still seeing the text clipped? This should not be the case is your field is larger than the text. You should size the field to be larger than any text that you would ever want to see displayed in it in preview mode.

Are you setting sliding in layout mode-format-set sliding and printing with slide up based on all above checked?

Ok, I made that change and now it seems to be sliding the cells properly.

The only thing I can't get to happen is for it to resize the part (body) based on the sliding. I have the check box selected when setting the other sliding options.

Thoughts?

Got it! I just had to toggle it off then back on again.

Funny.