Exporting using a value from a field

[Koen]

Hello,

It has been a long while since I posted on this forum. Must have been when was playing with filmmaker 5 or something. But now I have upgraded my filemaker 5 to version 11 advanced and fully busy creating a nice database.

Yesterday I tried to creat a script that would automatically create several PDF files from my database.

To do this I created a field 'pdffilename' and a script with a loop (that starts at the first record and exits the loop after the last record) and in between the script command 'export as PDF'

And in the PDF script I set a file value as '$pdffilename' so it would create a PDF file wih the filename of the contence of the the 'pdffilename' field (which is : file:file01.pdf) the 01 will increase by the number of the record. So record no. 1 is 01 and record 2 is 02 etc.

But somehow it does not work. When I start the script I get aan error message that the PDF file can not be created with a filename like this.

When I change the '$pdffilename' for 'file:file01.pdf' it works fine (well it ovewrites the PDF file a lot of times, but the filename is accepted.)

Any hint why my field entry does not work?

Cheers

Koen

[Vaughan]

A couple of things that could be the trouble: is the pdffilename field calculating the correct file name? If it uses the Get( RecordNumber ) function then it needs to be unstored. Secondly, as the script runs and saves the pdf files, it is going to the next record so that the file name changes?

[Koen]

The filename in the field from 'pdffilename' is 'file:leerling.pdf' This should be a correct filename.

The error message I get can be seen in the attachment.

It seems that FileMaker does not recognize the $ in front of the field name as a field but it thinks the filename is '$pdffilename' itself.

strange isn't it?

Cheers

Koen

[comment]

I set a file value as '$pdffilename' so it would create a PDF file wih the filename of the contence of the the 'pdffilename' field

Not sure what exactly you did here - sounds like you did not define a variable. See if this helps:

http://fmforums.com/forum/topic/45545-looping-script-to-extract-container-jpegs/page__p__212714#entry212714

[Koen]

Not sure what exactly you did here - sounds like you did not define a variable. See if this helps:

http://fmforums.com/forum/topic/45545-looping-script-to-extract-container-jpegs/page__p__212714#entry212714

Ah, that did the trick!

I didn't know I it was a variable, thought that this variable was a field in some way.

Thanks a lot!!

Can I use these variable for other things, like a counter?

So if I make a loop in a script and use a variable as counter and exit the loop if the variable reaches 10. (increasing the variable with one each time the loop starts over)?

Cheers

Koen

[comment]

Can I use these variable for other things, like a counter?

Yes.

[Koen]

Yes.

Cool

Thanks

Koen