I am new to FMP coming from a Microsoft Access background. In an Access report you can create a "layout" with a text field that has a property setting of "can grow". This allows the vertical size of the text to grow to account for the fact that in one record you may have 25 characters and in another you may have 200. The only thing I can find that is similar in FMP is the "sliding" feature - although it appears the sliding feature has a significant limitation in that you must initial set the size of the field to hold the largest amount of text entered and it will then shrink as necessary. The problem that I see with this is that the biggest size required can change over time as new records are added.

Please help! Thanks

IMHO, reporting with large blocks of text is a very weak part of FM. I've often wished for the "can grow" feature, but you're right, it's backwards in FM. You set the text field on the layout as large as ever needed, cross your fingers and using sliding to shrink it. Others may have more elegant techniques...

Very timely question. I am in the same situation and have the same question. I also have a corollary question: My reports reference a public record by volume and page. It is always listed volnum/pagenum with the / between. I need to allow the / and pagenum text to slide to the left when I have a volume that isn't in three digits. In Access I always merged with a doc formatted in Word. I was just in the Importing and Exporting forum trying to figure out how to merge FMP with Word, but that's not looking good. I don't mean to hijack this thread but if anyone answering Kball1's question happens to have the total answer, that'd be cool.

I couldn't get the sliding feature to do anything visible onscreen. Does it only work when printing?

You can only see it in Preview Mode, and when printed.

HTH

Lee

Perhaps you can use merge fields for the display of these two fields on your layout. Merge fields and/or sliding are two techniques to control white space on a report.

Will merge fields address the issue I described above?

Thanks

No, merge fields are better for such things as:

Created <> by <>

or

<

>

<>

<>

so that if Suite's empty, it disappears.

or

Dear <>,

but as far as I can tell, merge fields don't grow in height.