Layout/Printing woes

[Arrogate]

Here's a good one...

I have a database that was made as an address/phone book type thing. Nice and simple, all is well. Until the boss wants it printed.

It needs to be printed in a booklet form. Try to imagine this, it's a bit hard to explain in wriing: Print one entry on each half of a sheet of paper (landscape orientation), on both sides of the paper, then you stack all the pages, fold it in half, and Voila! you have a booklet. I have managed to get it to print on both halves of the paper (printing in columns) and on both sides of the paper (flip the paper over, stick it back into the printer), but I cannot figure out for the life of me how to make it end up in alphabetical order when all is said and done.

This is not so bad to do in PageMaker, Quark, or some other page layout software, but this MUST be in FileMaker...

If anyone can (a) understand what the heck I'm describing (: understand what I need, and © PLEASE give me some advice, it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!!

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[Vaughan]

This might be a function of your printer driver. Most postscript drivers offer similar functionality.

If not, you need to work out the algorithm that *you* use when doing it by hand, then create a script that does this. I imagine the trick is ordering the pages... so you might need to have a "pageorder" field and use a script to generate the required order, resort the pages on this "new" page order, then print.

[LiveOak]

If you are on a Mac, there used to be a small app called, I think, ClickBooks. This did exactly what you want. Which some printer drivers will allow you to print 8.5 x 11 layouts two to a 8.5 x 11 sheet, most don't work out the two sided stuff for you. I did a search, take a look at www.bluesquirrel.com. It seems to be available for both the Mac & PC. It's nice to see one useful utility that hasn't disappeared. -bd

[This message has been edited by LiveOak (edited November 09, 2000).]

[Arrogate]

I had originally used calculations and scripts to have it print correctly, but I got lost when one entry was deleted, and I was left with an odd number. I could not figure out how to make the first half of the first page print blank.

HOWEVER, ClickBooks ROCKS. It did exactly what I wanted to! The only thing I had to change was the layout. I had originally had it set with a page size of 5 1/2" x 8 1/2, and I had to change it to 8 1/2 x 11, as ClickBooks will change the size of your layout to compensate for the size difference. Thank you SO MUCH for the suggestion, I would have been lost without it!!