FM9: Containers keep losing reference to files...

[kivetros]

I work for a company that sells plastic injection molding machinery and parts. We use FileMaker Pro 9 for our database. Each record has information like volts, make, model, serial number, and so on and so forth. Well, we also have one Container object per entry that we use to display a picture of the part / machine that the record is in reference to.

Anyway, lately the Containers seem to be randomly losing the path to the picture files. Our pictures are on a networked drive, but the connection's fine, and this doesn't happen to every record - just certain ones - and it seems that it keeps happening to more and more records. I've been searching Google for more information about the Container for the last hour (still pretty new to FM), and I've had no luck.

Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

-K

[dansmith65]

Try looking at the reference that the container is storing for the file:

If you use FileMaker Advanced, add the container field to the Data Viewer.

Otherwise, create a script with a "Show Custom Dialog" step with the container field as the message.

Once you know where the database thinks the file is, test if you can find the file in that location.

[kivetros]

I'm just using FileMaker Pro, not Advanced.

This looks to be exactly what I was looking for - I spent quite awhile yesterday trying to find where FileMaker thinks the file is.

I'm going to give this a shot. I'll let you know what happens.

Thanks so much for your help.

-K

[kivetros]

I'm definitely on to something here. Thank you so much - your instructions worked perfectly, and I was able to see where FM was looking for the file.

Apparently, FM was looking for the file in exactly the right location (on a drive on our network). The network drives are all password-protected. All the computers in our office have a batch file on them that logs each user in to the networked drives. Well, even after running the login batch file, when I went to File-Open in FM and browsed to Computer, all the network drives showed up as unavailable. I tried to open the drive and it prompted me for a password. After putting in the password, I closed the Open dialog, checked again, and the pictures were all back.

So the question is - why isn't FM able to access the network drives until they are logged in to manually, through an Open dialog in Filemaker, even I can access those drives from the Windows Explorer?

Thanks again for all your help.

-K

EDIT: As it turns out, that's only part of the problem. It doesn't fix everything. Here's a screenshot of the output from that script on an entry with a broken picture:

I initially thought that somehow, part of the file path had gotten axed. But, upon further examination, I found that if I ran the script on an entry where the picture was fine, that the output was the same.

I don't see any rhyme or reason to this. The image file is EXACTLY where the screenshot says it is.

Also, I don't know if I mentioned this before or not, but only references to the images are stored - not the images themselves. Could this be a part of the problem?

Edited November 23, 2010 by Guest
Added more info.

[dansmith65]

I am glad I was able to at least point you in the right direction, but I don't know what to say now. I don't think I can help with this one.

This is just a stab in the dark, but since FileMaker manages it's own networking when connecting to remote databases, perhaps this separation of networking is carying over to the remote images; causing you to have to log-in to the network drive via FileMaker's connection to the network drive separate from the OS's connection to the network drive.

You might want to look into 360Works SuperContainer.

Edited November 23, 2010 by Guest