automatic portal row setup?

[Scott Robuck]

I've search and searched but can't seem to find a way to dynamically set the number or rows that show up in a portal.

Here is what I have. I have 120 schools, each with a number of teachers ranging from 5 to 180. I need to be able to create printed copies of a layout that shows basic school info at the top, and a portal with the teachers in the portal below. You can see the problem here is that I have to set the portal rows to 180 even though there are some campuses that have substantially less than that. The end result is a printout (PDF actually) that can be emailed to each campus.

Is this possible through some sort of script? I know that a work-around is to create a bunch of layouts with varying sizes of portals, then searching for the number of teacher that would closely fill the portal, but it seems like there should be a way to automate the portal row numbers. D'oh!

This is my first post and I listed myself as an intermediate user only because I have used FMPro since version 5 but really Filemaker just became another assigned duty with no training or added pay. So I really may be just a beginner. Thanks in advance for your help...

[comment]

Print from a list layout of teachers, sub-summarized by school. Put the school info in the sub-summary part.

[Scott Robuck]

Sorry, I'm not sure what you mean. So I've just changed my profile info to Beginner!

Maybe I didn't add some pertinent information. Some of the teachers and staff at each campus are not to be shown in this list. Also the list has to be sorted and sub-sorted to several degrees. On top of all that, there is data that is merged into text for each campus.

Since a picture is worth a 1000 words, I'm posting a sample of the DB with two schools, one small and the other large to show you my current layouts and all the weird relationships I've created (and I'll probably be embarrassed once all you experts see the crazy way I'm trying to use Filemaker Pro!).

So if you would, please take a look at my file and see that not all staff is listed (based on whether they are receiving a new laptop or not) and also sorted first according to major titles (principals, academy directors, and asst principals at the top, and then teacher below them sorted by last name).

I've allowed guest access and Admin has no password.

Schools_DB.zip

[comment]

I am having trouble understanding your file. Why isn't there a relationship connecting Campus to Employees, based on CampusID?

I suggest you take a look at the attached instead. You can modify the script to find the included employees by any criteria, and you can also change the sort order - as long as SchoolID is included before any employee fields.

Report.fp7.zip