Portal content isn't sliding up!?!?!

[meglome]

I have a report layout which has a letter on it. In the middle of the letter I have a 12 row portal. Each row in the portal has 2 rows of fields, the top one is merge field with a description and cost, the one below is a paragraph of formatted text which describes the item. I have the portal expanded down quite a bit to make sure there is enough room to fit the varying lengths of the description text. I have set the sliding to All above/reduce the size of enclosing part. But it's not reducing the extra space in the portal at all. It’s leaving it the exact same size. Any ideas? I just can't figure out what's wrong.

[Inky Phil]

Are you aware that the results of any sliding will not be apparent in browse mode and that you will have to go into preview mode or print the layout to see the results?

Also that any text boxes have to have their alignment set to TOP to allow sliding to take place

Phil

Edited November 27, 2006 by Guest

[meglome]

I have checked it in preview mode and printed it and it doesn't slide up. I also checked your suggestion of text being aligned top which it is. But thanks for the suggestions.

[Inky Phil]

Have you set the part that you want to slide into as sliding as well. Both parts need to be set.

Phil

[Lee Smith]

Portal are for viewing the data of a related file, and not for printing. AFAIK, the contents of a portal do not slide. The reason for having a field slide is for printing, and since portals are not meant for printing, I'm not even sure that the portal itself will slide, as I have never tested it.

BTW, you should be printing your report from the file where the data actually resides.

HTH

Lee

[meglome]

I just can't get it. I've attached the file with some sample data in it. I've left the real data for the report I'm trying to print so you can see it. Look at the layout Initiatives Details Letter. Obviously if anyone has a better way of doing it I'd be glad to hear it.

sliding_problem.zip

Edited November 27, 2006 by Guest

[Inky Phil]

Hi Lee,

I too have never tried to slide a portal but according to the help files there is no reason why you shouldn't. In fact it specifically says that you can.

I mention this just so that the poster doesn't get any more confused than they probably are already

Phil

[Inky Phil]

Now I just don't get it

I have had a look at your file and the portal is sliding just fine. What is the problem?

Phil

[meglome]

Ok take a look at the attached pdf and you'll see what's happening to me. There are gaps between one portal row and the next.

As I mention above if someone has a different way to do it that would be great. Otherwise I'm getting the feeling there is some weird bug here.

sliding_problem.pdf

Edited November 27, 2006 by Guest

[Lee Smith]

Change the slide rule to "All Above" instead of "Only Directly Above" and see if that doesn't do it. I tested this by putting data in the address line 2 and 3.

HTH

Lee

[meglome]

Thanks again for the suggestions.

I did that on all items on the layout and it still doesn't do it. Is the sliding working for my attached file on other versions of FM and/or platforms?

[Lee Smith]

The Gap I see is because of the size of the Field in the portal. This is why I said that you should be making your report in the related file. Although you can print portals, they are rigid and hard to adjust for printing such as this.

HTH

Lee

[Fenton]

Portals are simply not made to print long variable text across page boundaries. The better method is to go to the "lines" via the portal relationship and print from the line items data table. It is always possible to look back "up" the relationship to get the parent data.

In this case however I see one glitch, to do with positively identifying the contact. You are currently printing from Contacts, and looking thru Schools to the multiple applications; which works well for showing the contact (obviously), but doesn't print properly.

You are not attaching a particular Contact to an application however. So, from applications you are only going to see the 1st Contact entered for any particular School.

But you have "role-specific" info on the print. So, it seems to me you need to specify which Contact for that School fills that role. You could access them via a calculated ID in the Contacts table, much like you did the School ID of an approved application; but via a more direct TO from the ApplicationsOK TO.

You can go to the approved applications of a Contact(?) via a relationship, or use similar, with the [*] All records in found set, to go to all the approved applications. Or some other relationship or find.

sliding_fej.fp7.zip

[meglome]

Okay...

Thanks for the file. Although I'm not sure I understand all of it. The reason the letter was based on Contacts List is that there are often more than one contact of a particuluar type in any school. There are 182 schools but there are a total of 212 co-ordinators attached to those schools. So letters are always sent as a subset of the contact list, maybe to all the contacts depending on the actual letter. How can I set this up so I can select from the contacts?

[Oldfogey]

As a matter of interest, portals have been slidable since V6.

I wonder if the problem isn't portal-related? I am getting a very similar result to this with a very large 'report' consisting of multiple text boxes which are mostly 1 page but some can be bigger. For no apparent reason, I sometimes get huge spaces between successive text boxes - like 2-3 empty pages. Sometimes I get smaller spaces printing between text boxes that almost touch. In another report with one text box covering a maximum sized layout, I sometimes get an extra blank page at the end. In a nutshell, I don't think FMP handles printing big layouts very well. (Note the 'sometimes'.)

Edited November 28, 2006 by Guest

[Oldfogey]

I don't suppose anyone is following this any more - I hope not.

Thought I should correct my previous post. Today I found the reason for the weird behaviour. Without going into too much detail - I neglected to make the title field sliding and reducing Part on the last page.

Sorry FMI and others.