I'm hoping someone can help me with an intermittent problem I'm having running an external script from an opener file in FMP 6 on Mac OSX (10.4 on the remote, 10.5 on the host). The opener is on a machine on the same LAN as the host also running FMP 6 (only 2 machines). The opener has a "Perform Script" step which runs an opening script on the host file (hosted by FMP 6 only - not server). In the opening script are some steps to capture errors such as if the host file isn't already opened or it can't connect etc - these usually work well.

However on occasions it seems that users may be presented with the "Open Remote" dialog window when things don't go as planned and they occasionally manage to reference another hosted file or lose the reference completely. I want to stop this from happening. I wondered if I could somehow hard code the path to the external script or pull it from a field or in some way restore the correct script step whenever the opener file is run. I haven't tried making the opener file read-only via Mac permissions as I'm not sure if that will work.

Thanks for any help you can give.

It's been a while since I've worked with version 6, and I forget how much stuff has changed since then, so this may not be relevant, but here it goes...

Rather than just trying to perform the script in the remote file, make sure it is open first. If you set error capture on and allow user abort off then you should be able to exit the script after determining that the file isn't open and can't be opened, and the user will never get any 'Open...' dialogs.

Thanks Dan. The error capture seems to take this into account and usually works, presenting dialogs when errors are captured to remind them to check whether the file has been opened etc. Just once every 4-6 months I get a call to say that the opener can't open the main file and when I review the script and reselect the correct external script in the correct file it all works again. I haven't dabbled with FMP for some years now - it's an old solution that for the most part works OK and so I haven't been inclined to upgrade (it's a homemade solution in use by friends who have no interest in upgrading it).