Flexible lay-out for long and short letters

[aislinn]

Hi there!

I'm trying to add a "written communications" module to my database, allowing me to produce personalized letters and faxes.

However, I can't seem to work around the fact that some texts are short (1 page total) and others will be longer (2 or more pages).

Is there a way to define a "flexible size" for the bodytext field in the letter layout, without having to let my users tamper in layout mode themselves?

Or maybe a workaround, that first calculates the number of lines required to print the full text and then decides on what layout it needs?

Or - if at all possible - get FMP to open an MS Word template and print the lot from there? I know I'm reaching here, cos I've never been able to get FMP to communicate directly with Office.

Moreover, the solution should work both on Mac OS and Windows.

No idea how to solve this one. Hope someone can help...

[bcooney]

In layout mode resize the body part so that it is very tall (you'll see the page breaks as you resize). Then place your text field in the body part and resize it to be the same height as the body part. Now use Sliding/Printing to shrink the text field, also reducing the size of the body part.

But, be warned. FM isn't a very good word processor. Sometimes your page breaks will be awkward. You may wish to export the data to Word and do a merge there.