I am not understanding why it is that when running a report one becomes stuck in Preview mode, unable to make buttons work. If I want to have a statusbar-free UI, it seems that this means that users become stuck in Preview mode.

I can put buttons for 'print as pdf' but they won't operate in preview mode. and if I do change to browse mode, the report becomes incomplete (record by record).

Surely I'm missing something very simple...since that's what collecting all this data is all about, right?

I can think of 2 fairly simple solutions. The first is to Show the Status Area temporarily, with Allow User Abort ["Off"], so that can only Continue, then let them Cancel in the Print dialog itself, or ask them after the Preview.

The 2nd is to use a floating palette window, such as this one:

http://www.nightwing.com.au/FileMaker/demos7/demo704.html

There are all kinds of high class demos at Ray Cologon's site.

http://www.nightwing.com.au/FileMaker/demos.html

A possible third option to add to Fenton's list is if you can get your hands on Advanced copy, you can use your custom menus to script the close, print, etc.