Printing Page 1 problems

[Tom England]

We have a few databases and a problem has just arisen that I'm sure we haven't had before-->

We have a layout (a letter) with 2 pages to it. I have done a find and there are two clients in the found set. I want to print just the first page of the letter for BOTH clients.

I go to print and choose 'Records being browsed', and then choose Print Range pages from 1 to 1.

The only thing that prints off is page 1 for the first client/record.

I have spoken to FM support and they have suggested that it could be the print drivers, which I doubt very much as it is occuring on every computer, and on every printer!

HELP - PLEASE!!!!

[Vaughan]

That is how the printer driver works, never mind what FM Inc says.

What you need to do is go to the first record, print the first page only using the "current record" option. Then go to the second record and repeat. As you can see there is no elegant way to automate this process -- it's an unusual one.

On the other hand, try this: create a single-page layout, then print from this. Only the first page of data will ever print because that's all that fits on the layout.

[danjacoby]

Actually, there is an elegant way.

Create a script that:

Goes to the first record

Does a page setup[restore, no dialog] -- make sure the page setup prints only the current record and only page one.

Loops

Prints the record[no dialog]

Goes to the next record [exit after last]

End loop

And there you have it -- printing the first page of each record in the found set.

[Vaughan]

The only problem I've found is with multiple users and different printers stuff like Page Setups get lost or don't work. Especially on Windows. If I'm doing soemthing wrong let me know!

[Tom England]

This seems to be a very basic task that FM cannot perform easily. We used to use MS Works on Macs that was about 15 years old and that could do it!!!

Ah well, have to try and work round it I suppose. Thanks anyway

[Tom England]

Danjacoby,

The problem with your script is that you don't have the oportunity to specify a printer a paper source, and the page no. ie you may wish to print page 2 for all the found set. Messing about with your script, I have come up with the following which appears to work. Can anyone see any potential problems?:

Goto Record [First]

Print Setup (Make sure it performs WITH dialog)

Print (Again make sure it performs with dialog)

Loop

Go to record [Next, Exit after last]

Print Setup [No Dialog]

Print [No Dialog]

End Loop

This way you setup the print options before the loop, and they remain the same for all records in the loop (I think!!) Do people think this is OK???

[ November 08, 2001: Message edited by: Tom England ]

[BobWeaver]

As Vaughan said, this is a printer driver issue. The printer driver software doesn't make the paper source or number of copies information available to Filemaker. I know this sounds a bit weird because the print dialog comes up within Filmaker. But, this is an operating system call which handles the print request, and when it goes away, the printing is done and Filemaker isn't told how many copies were selected or what paper source was used. So, it can't remember it for next time. Even if it did have that data, it has no way of setting it when it calls the print dialog. The only exception to this is the Filemaker specific options to print all records, current record, scripts etc.

Go with Vaughan's workaround to create another layout that only shows the first page of the letter.

As for selecting the paper source, I recently discovered a way to do this by using multiple printer definition (PPD) files. There's a post on it here in this forum. If you're desperate enough to try it, here is the link:

http://www.fmforums.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=31&t=000216

[ November 08, 2001: Message edited by: BobWeaver ]