Field Borders Questions

[adyf]

I have tinkered with field borders in the past without much success but would like to revisit this again.

I have a layout that is an assessment report with the following fields that I would like to present as a table with lines (field borders):

(Question No) (Question) (Answer) (Competent/Not Yet Competent)->This is a text box

Firstly, the depth of the (Question) and (Answer) fields is quite large to accomodate the varying contents. If I set the fields to slide up and reduce the enclosing part is there a way to get the two fields with the least text to only slide up as far as the field with the most text? This way the bottom field borders will remain in a horizontal line. Previously I have only managed to get all three fields to slide up all the way to the bottom of the text in the field which leaves the bottom field borders at three different heights.

Secondly, some of the answers are that long that I had to extend the depth of my field onto the next page. In this case does this mean that field borders cannot be used neatly? Will a border automatically extend onto the next page and still give a neat table appearance? A colleague tried to do this previously but it looked a mess and he had to abandon the field borders to make the report look presentable. Downside is it doesn't look as neat and it isn't easy to tell if my Assessors are ticking directly beneath the Competent or Not Yet Competent heading.

[Vaughan]

Questions (and their answers) should be in individual records, not fields. This will make printing them much easier.

[adyf]

Questions (and their answers) should be in individual records, not fields. This will make printing them much easier.

Individual records to facilitate my field borders issue or for proper structure or both?

In my solution each question has only one answer so I didn't think it necessary to do this and that a Question and an Answer could be in the same table as one record. Are you suggesting that I need two seperate tables or just use one table? If I go with two tables I then have the issue of printing my assessment report from two tables by either printing from a portal or creating a reporting table.

Is it actually possible to create a nice looking tabular report with lines even when the contents of a field are so large that they run over onto the next page?

[Russell Barlow]

Is it actually possible to create a nice looking tabular report with lines even when the contents of a field are so large that they run over onto the next page?

Absolutely. Look into field scaling by searching under Removing Blank Spaces in Printouts within Filemaker 11 Help. This means you can create large fields on a layout, and when set correctly they will scale to the size needed for the contents of that field.

[Vaughan]

It is NOT easy making a printed sport with vertical lines between fields. This is because the sliding/printing feature shrinks each field individually and independently. Try to make a design that does not have vertical lines in it.