PDF split

[Merit Solutions]

I have a summarised report in an Event table displaying events grouped by VenueName. Each page represents about 10 -12 Events. I need to export the Pages (not records) as individual PDFs, what is the best way to accomplish this? I have tried Save Records as PDF and clicked All Records and then Options: Page 1 to 1 which works for the first page, what is the best way to automate page 2 to 2, 3 to 3 etc..? Or is it best to remove the first page (with a Constrain) and get page 2 to be the first record? Many Thanks

[PamRotella]

I don't have version 9 in front of me, but in version 8, at the "save records as pdf" box, there's an "Options" button. If you click it, in the "PDF Options" dialog that shows up, under the "Document" tab, you should be able to specify "Specific pages", as in 2 to 2 or 3 to 3. Doesn't version 9 have a similar setup?

Also a suggestion: If you're going to do a lot of work in Adobe going forward, you might want to get the full version of Adobe so that you can print from any program into Adobe (thereby saving what you print to a pdf file). It gives you a little more flexibility, and in the case of more complex FileMaker layouts, makes the pdf file size smaller and the pdf-saving process shorter.

I've had extremely complex, data-intensive layouts that took too much time to save through FileMaker's pdf feature at all, but the same layouts printed to Adobe (creating a pdf file) in just a couple of minutes.

What happens after you install the full version is that Adobe appears as one of your printers in the print dialog box. You just select it as your printer, and anything you print to it is actually saved as a pdf file. And that's for all of your programs, so it's really handy!

:(

[Fenton]

The ability to print to PDF is built-in to Mac OS X, part of the system-wide Print dialog. So you don't need Adobe Acrobat to do it; though undoubtedly Acrobat has more features.

[Merit Solutions]

Thanks Pam. Unfortunately that doesn' really resolve the issue. I am aware of the Options button as I mentioned, but the difficulty is knowing how many pages and how to assign the relevant page from to in the Options window as part of a FM script. I am on a Mac so we have PDF saving built in.

I am having a little success with Automator. Does anyone know how to send an event to an Automator created app? FMP doesn't want to recognise it!!*@.

[comment]

It's possible to do this in Filemaker alone. You need to loop through the categories, finding one at a time. This can be done in several ways, much depends on what's involved in the initial find.

[bruno]

Let's start with making the append to pdf script bug-free . On win2003server it gives an error 800 and it seems that fm didn't solve it yet.

[Merit Solutions]

Thanks all, I finally figured a reasonable solution - I created an application in Automator to break the PDF into seperate files and called it from an AppleScript. Obviously this is a Mac only solution, any PC solutions would be of interest.