Fitting more than 100 characters into a field?

[rufuspoofus]

I am creating forms in Filemaker (currently 10 trial, soon 9 pro) and for most of the fields I am asking questions that exceed 100 characters in length. Is there a workaround for exceeding this constraint?

[Lee Smith]

I'm not sure I'm understanding you, but I think all you need to do is to go into layout mode, select the field(s) involved and pull the field corners of the field to the size you need. This can be length, or with, or both.

HTH

Lee

[rufuspoofus]

In the Manage Database window, when creating a new Field Name, FileMaker errors telling me that I cannot enter a field name that exceeds 100 characters.

I do not think that re-sizing the field will help because the field name would still be limited to 100 characters, right?

[bcooney]

The field NAME cannot exceed 100 characters, not the content. So, in Manage Database, you'll create a field named "Question".

[rufuspoofus]

Thanks, that could work. The thing is that if I write out the entire question in a text field, how do I get what I type in that field to appear on every subsequent record?

[bcooney]

Not sure what you mean. What tables do you have?

[Lee Smith]

Have you read the user guide, and looked at the sample files that came with the FileMaker Application?

[rufuspoofus]

I am generating a form that will be printed out, then filled out by customers, then scanned back into the database using an OCR, populating the specified fields in the forms I created; with a unique form for each customer based on an assigned ID#.

I have gone through the user manual and the entire tutorial, but I did not find anything in there that resolves my issue.

[bcooney]

"then scanned back into the database using an OCR, populating the specified fields in the forms I created"

wow, how are you doing this?

Are you familiar with this product: Productive Computing's PDF Manipulator

Edited March 4, 2009 by Guest

[rufuspoofus]

With a program called TeleForm.

[comment]

You could use global fields for the questions, or you could just type them directly on the layout. However, I have a feeling that you'll eventually need to have each answer as an individual record. So perhaps you should start by creating a table of Questions.

See also:

http://fmforums.com/forum/showtopic.php?tid/183639/

http://fmforums.com/forum/showtopic.php?tid/180113/

[bcooney]

Still not understanding what your issue is. If the same text appears on each record (which will be printed as a form), what you really want is layout text not field data.

[rufuspoofus]

As you can tell I am still very new to this, how would I create the layout text?

[bcooney]

You should read the user guide. It'll save you lots of frustration.

Layout text is created in layout mode with the text tool.

[rufuspoofus]

Thank you very much for the help.

I just jumped into this project before I was completely ready to.