No Fields showing in portal

[Glenda]

HI

If I create a portal and place field in it they show up and work perfectly. If I decide that I want a colour fill (say white)in the portal then the fields will not show or come to the front of the portal. Any of the templates do this and it works and I cannot work out what I am doing wrong.

Can anybody help?

Glenda

[Inky Phil]

Forgive me if this is too obvious a question but are your fields set to be transparent?

Phil

[LaRetta]

...then the fields will not show or come to the front of the portal.

You might also try selecting the portal itself and Arrange > Send To Back. This will place the fields on top of the portal so they can be viewed.

[Glenda]

No the fields are not transparent and I have tried bringing them to the front, seding the portal backwards...everything I could think of. I even set the database (one of the templates and mine) next to each other and double checked all the field and portal attributes.

In the end I copied and paste the one from the template and used that. Not a good solution but it worked. Not sure what I did wrong.

Glenda

[comment]

An object that is INSIDE a portal is automatically IN FRONT of the portal - so sending the portal backward or the fields forward is meaningless. An object is in a portal if its upper-left corner is inside the portal.

[LaRetta]

An object that is INSIDE a portal is automatically IN FRONT of the portal - so sending the portal backward or the fields forward is meaningless. An object is in a portal if its upper-left corner is inside the portal.

I can't say I totally agree, Michael.

If I decide that I want a colour fill (say white)in the portal then the fields will not show or come to the front of the portal.

I assumed she was viewing it in layout mode where, if the portal has been colored and is on top of the fields, the fields will NOT show. This indicates that the fields are first in stacking order (NOT in front of the portal). And it can then be confusing to NOT see fields in a portal if in layout mode.

The stacking order can be clearly observed by sending forward and back of the various objects. I suggest that FM brings the fields to the front of a portal in browse mode for display. The stacking order is important to diminish layout flashing because the extra work required for FM to render the fields in front is what causes extra flash.

So fields may always be IN a portal but they are not always on TOP or in FRONT. :wink2:

[comment]

I thought this was in Browse mode. You are right about Layout mode - and of course, there is no good reason to put fields behind the portal in the first place. But if changing the stacking order didn't help, I cannot think of a cause other than the fields being outside the portal (or perhaps a corrupted layout).