Summary field for total pages

[The Big Bear]

Hi all

I am trying to get the total number of pages to display on our bill of material program. I have create a calculation field called page_number that use the function Get(pagenumber) and then create a summary field called total_pages and chose the "Maximum function" and chose the field page_number and under Summarize Repetition I chose "All together".

Reading the function for Maximun in the FM help to my understanding that this should work.

But the total_pages field displays the number 0 in the preview and the print Mode.

Should this work or am I not reading the help file correct and If I am not reading the help file correct would you please direct me in the right direction.

Thanks in advance for the help

Lionel

[comment]

The reason why this cannot work, I think, is that Filemaker doesn't know how many pages are there until it has finished laying out the entire document. By then it's too late to evaluate the summary and insert it into the already rendered pages.

Even if it could work somehow, it wouldn't necessary be correct, because it would return the number of the page where the last record is - which may not be last page of the entire printout.

Note also that Get (PageNumber) is NOT an attribute of a record: in fact, the same field can return two different results within the same record if that record spans two pages. Summary fields summarize record data only.

Unfortunately, the only way I know of to get the total number of pages is still by a script that enters preview mode, goes to the last page and sets a global field to Get (PageNumber).

See also:

http://fmforums.com/forum/showtopic.php?tid/144352/post/144371/#144371

[The Big Bear]

Comment

Thanks for the answer

Lionel