Dangling Sub-Summary Parts

[jbernal]

I'm working with a columnar layout with Sub-Summary parts for a city listing directory of business contacts. The layout displays contact information, grouped by the contacts' cities of residence. Unfortunately, I have several dangling city headings where the heading and Sub-Summary part occur towards the bottom of the page. This leaves the part dangling like this:

Portland, OR [the Sub-Summary part, with city and state fields.]

[column break.]

Jose Bernal

John Doe

Jane Doe [contact entries starting at the top of a new column without the heading directly above it, as intended.]

Is there any trick for making sure these dangling Sub-Summary parts start at a new column WITHOUT all of the Sub-Summary parts breaking into new columns?

Thanks,

jbernal

[ncd726]

I'm having the same problem. Did you ever find a solution?

Thanks.

[jbernal]

I'm getting there. I'm creating relationships and fields for a work-around to this problem. Those should be done by Friday afternoon. Then I will post.

[jbernal]

I have a work-around for this problem, which involves eliminating the sub-summary part entirely. The implementation will vary depending on the application, but in principle should follow this example, which assumes we have a table called contacts that we want displayed in a directory format grouped by our contacts' cities.

1.) Create a self-join on the contacts table based on whatever the sub-summary part was to summarize (in this example, city). We do this by joining the tables on the city field. Call the relationship, for example, "directory_order."

2.) Edit the relationship so that records in the relationship will sort alphabetically by last name.

3.) Create a serial number field in contacts called, for example, "counter." Do this by defining a new text field to be auto-enter serial number. In browse mode, replace the value of the new serial number field, which are now blank, with actual serial numbers, incrementing by 1 ( Records -> Replace -> Serial Numbers.)

4.) Create a new calculation field for your city heading called, for example, "city_heading." The calculation definition will look like this:

If ( contacts::counter = directory_order::counter; city )

This assumes the field name that stores the city for each contact is called "city" - it may be called something else. On OSX I purposefully do not include a default parameter for this If statement. This may differ on a Windows platform.

5.) In your directory layout, paste the fields you want displayed in your directory in the correct order in the body part, with the new calculation field positioned at the top of the body part. I prefer to use merge fields:

__body part_

<>

<> <>

<>

<>

<>

You get the idea.

6.) Adjust the sliding and printing options on each text object. This ensures that the city_heading field doesn't take up any space on the directory layout when it is blank.

Finally, make sure that your records are sorted on the directory layout. In this example, I would sort alphabetically by city then, say, last name. This solution works very well and can be combined with other calculation fields to control exactly how many entries are displayed before the directory breaks to a new column. There are some maintenance issues that need to be considered here, especially in regard to the serial number field. If these issues aren't apparent to you, feel free to ask me how I am using scripts and validation to make this solution work smoothly.

-José

[ncd726]

Cool. I worked through the instructions you posted and put together this example which has 2 "sub-summary" fields.

Dangling_SubSummary.zip