Conditional formatting of checkbox set

[Lougee]

I've searched the entire site looking for conditional AND format AND checkbox but didn't find anything that addresses my particular question.

In an event tracking db, I have a portal in a layout (based on the events table) that shows all the expected participants (from a join table - registrations - between participants and events) for a specific event. In the portal I have the participant's name, attendingStatus (yes, no, no response), and a field called activities_mealsLodging. This field is linked to a value list -- a hard-coded list of possible meals and nights' lodging (basically the same for all events) and looks something like breakfast_1, breakfast_2, lunch_1, lodging_1, lodging_2, etc and is formatted as a checkbox set. The user can select which meals the participant will be eating and which nights he/she will be staying from right in the portal. Very convenient.

Now I want the meals/lodging choices to show only once a participant has officially registered (attendingStatus = yes) and be invisible until then. Easy enough to do with conditional formatting. I set the text and fill to be the background color unless the attendingStatus field = yes. Then the text is black and the checkboxes are available for selection. Like I said, this works very well. Except...

Setting the text and fill to the background color (or transparent for the bg) doesn't change the color of the checkboxes themselves. I have an apparently empty space but with checkboxes showing and I can't find or figure out a way to make the boxes themselves invisible too. Since it's already in a portal, the invisibility trick won't work. And I don't need to drill down so far that I need to create separate records for each meal and night's lodging. This way give enough detail without being excessive.

So my question is -- is there any way to make the checkbox boxes invisible using conditional formatting? I don't think so but I really, really hope that I'm wrong.

[Lee Smith]

try your search using pluses like this [color:blue]+conditional +format +checkbox

[Lougee]

Thanks, Lee. I'm sorry I was confusing. My search was exactly what you said (I just translated it when I wrote my post). There were 7 results and none of them addressed my particular question.

[Fitch]

Yes we can! One of my favorite tricks:

In the conditional formatting dialog, click the More Formatting... button. Set the font SIZE to some crazy large number, e.g. 144.

This will cause the visible contents of the field to be pushed outside the object's boundaries.

Note: this will NOT prevent the checkbox from being clicked. You'll still need to deal with that separately.

[Lougee]

I would have expected that the large text would cause the field to extend outside the portal and break how each participant displays but I tried it and it works!! Exactly what I was hoping for. OK, not exactly since I still have to make it unclickable when invisible, but 99% perfect.

There are sooo many ways to think outside the box... But I'm slowly learning. Thanks a million, Tom.

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The light came on last evening -- it's a FileMaker natural law that text size doesn't change the field size. I know this well so my earlier comment about about breaking the portal display was kind of a 'duh.' But I still wouldn't have thought of this myself.

Edited September 3, 2009 by Guest
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