Container Fields, PDFs, Emails, and Filesizes

[Quartekoen]

One of the features I love about FileMaker is that when you drag and drop a PDF into a container field, the field displays a thumbnail image of that PDF.

One of the things I hate about it is filesizes.

We have a number of PDFs that would be beneficial to send to our customers in an email. Our general rule of thumb is that we don't send emails with files over 5MB. In our file system, a single PDF may be listed as 1 or 2 MB, so it should be fine to send.

These PDFs are often updated, and in our FileMaker 'email center' we would like to have an actual image of the file shown in a container field so that the user knows clearly which one he or she is sending. This is where the problem seems to arise.

When someone right-clicks on the container field and chooses "Insert File", the PDF is added and it shows as 2MB (using the length function on the container field), just as it does in the file system, but it does not show the thumbnail of the file. However, if someone drags and drops a file into the container field, the thumbnail is shown, but the file size jumps dramatically. In these cases, a 2MB file becomes a 9MB file, and a 250KB file becomes 4MB.

Is this simply something I'm doing wrong with the use of the Length() function on the container field? Or is FileMaker really decompressing the PDF to this bloated size? When adding a file to the container field, is it possible to store only a reference to the file's location, while still having a thumbnail image of the file appear in FileMaker?

Thanks

[IdealData]

One of the features I love about FileMaker is that when you drag and drop a PDF into a container field, the field displays a thumbnail image of that PDF.

I'm on Mac and I [color:red]cannot drag/drop PDF or QuickTime movies (even through the help system says you can. Drag/drop of TEXT does work. I would love to know how to drag/drop image files.

"Insert "File" is different to "Insert Picture", and the 'file' method does not yield a thumbnail but the other methods do for supported file types.

You should still be able to "store by reference" to reduce the 'bloat' that FM seems to add to PDFs.

Noticably the PDF export produces significantly larger file sizes than those produced by Mac OS.

Edited October 20, 2009 by Guest

[K1200]

is FileMaker really decompressing the PDF to this bloated size?

Yes, that IS the case. When I looked into this (a couple of years ago) I found references to the fact that FileMaker bundles things like complete font definition files into each internally-stored PDF. Storing references to unbloated versions appears to be the only viable solution. But the real solution would be for FileMaker to provide more control over how PDFs and graphics are stored in containers.

At minimum, a whitepaper from FileMaker on "Technical Considerations Of Container Fields" would be a great help. There are simply too many things people are left having to figure out on their own -- like this situation with PDFs.

[Quartekoen]

Thanks to both of you for the help. I've discussed this with others here that I work with, and we've found a viable alternative.

Thanks again.

[IdealData]

What's the alternative?