Title Footer?

[SteveS]

I have a layout setup in form view designed to print multiple pages, depending on the amount of text contained in each report. I have a few signature lines that I want to print out at the bottom of the last page. I set the sliding/printing on all fields inside the body section to sliding up based on all above and also reduce the size of the enclosing part.

I believe the title footer will print the first page and not the last, does anyone know how to accomplish this task? Your help would be appreciated.

[bcooney]

See this thread: Ray Cologon's Technique for Last Page Footer.

[SteveS]

Bcooney,

Thank you for your help, I went to the thread you suggested but somehow got lost in the calculations to arrange the signature block to the bottom of the last page.

I am using FM 10.0 and believe the Status(CurrentFoundCount)described in the thread should be Get(FoundCount). Anyway, do you know any easier way to accomplish this task?

[bcooney]

Yes, all the Status functions did change to Get ( ). I hadn't realized how old Ray's post was. However, I'm not aware of another way to achieve a "last page footer" that's at the bottom of the last page. I can't think of any new features that'll help. Maybe someone else?

[SteveS]

I have faith that someone will have an answer.

[bcooney]

One suggestion is to use the Title Footer, and shuffle the printout.

[comment]

I don't see how that would work.

There's also the question of what should happen when there is not enough room for the signatures on the last page.

[bcooney]

So, you feel the best approach is still Ray's technique, comment? There is an article that describes a different technique on FM Advisor, but even the author admits it's a cludge.

[comment]

I think the best approach is to put the signatures in a Trailing Grand Summary part, and not try to push them towards the bottom of the page.

A possible improvement could be to place them in the body, calculated to appear only in the last record - that at least eliminates an "orphaned" last page, with only the signatures on it.

If really necessary, I would explore the option of printing all records except the ones on the last page, then printing the remaining records using a different layout. But again, a higher footer means less room for the body, so one would need to test for that too - otherwise there could be two "last" pages, with signatures on both.

[bcooney]

Not fair, comment! OP wants the sigs at the bottom of the last page. I realize a tgs part is the easiest approach, but that's not what he wants...exactly. There are some techniques that are just too complicated and it's best to settle for what FM can do easily. This is one of them, for sure.

[comment]

What's not fair here? That I consider the costs against the benefits? The fact is that unless the number of records per page is constant (i.e. no summary parts and no sliding*), there is no way to tell how much space is left on the last page.

If you want, you could adapt Ray's suggestion this way: start with zero carriage returns, and check how many pages there are in total. Add one carriage return at a time, and check the total number of pages again - when it increases, go back one step and stop.

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(*) Note that Ray's technique also relies on this.

Edited March 16, 2009 by Guest

[bcooney]

I agree with you, the costs do outweigh the benefits using Ray's technique. However, what's not fair is you beat me to suggesting that it just might not be worth it to engineer a "last page footer at the bottom."

Didn't realize Ray relies on no summary parts or sliding. There you go, how realistic is that?