Large Text Field

[SteveB]

I've got a long text field that has topic headings in it. I would like to put buttons above the field so that the user can click and have the field automatically scroll to the correct spot. Spliting the field up is not an option. Any ideas? Thanks. Steve

[Chuck]

Well, I've got an idea, although I'm not sure if it will work for you.

Have the field appear on a layout that allows the entire text of the field to appear. The field itself doesn't have a scroll bar in it in the Field format. Instead, to view the contents of the field, you would scroll through the body.

At the top, include buttons that use the script Scroll Window [Page Down] script step (found under the Windows section of script steps. If the section that the button takes the user to would require five page downs, then include five of these steps in the script that takes them to that section. Then in each page view, also include a button that runs a script Script Window [Home] to take the user back to the top.

Does that work for you?

Chuck

[SteveB]

Thanks for the suggestion Chuck. I tried it, but it has problems: Scroll page down once destroys the entire screen contents...the field seems to get a lot bigger. I've got tabs on the top and icons on the side that vanish.

[ May 11, 2001: Message edited by: Steveinvegas ]

[mdpres]

quote:

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Originally posted by Steveinvegas:

I've got a long text field that has topic headings in it. I would like to put buttons above the field so that the user can click and have the field automatically scroll to the correct spot. Spliting the field up is not an option. Any ideas? Thanks. Steve

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If you cannot split this field up how about several hidden fields then when a selection was made go to field "x" Scroll to selection.

It would get you to the general area.

Dean

[BobWeaver]

What about this:

Fields:

Ltf - Text, your large text field

gHeadingNo - global number, the number of the heading that you want to scroll to (from 1 to whatever)

cLtf - Calculation = Middle(Ltf,Position(Ltf,"~",1,gHeadingNo),64000)

Then display cLtf instead of the original field. Place a special character ("~" or some other) at the beginning of each heading. Make your up and down buttons run scripts that increment and decrement the value of gHeadingNo.

The drawback is that while you can then use the regular scroll bar to move down from this position, you can't go above the currently selected heading without clicking the up button. However, you could create additional buttons that go up or down in smaller increments.

[SteveB]

Thanks for the suggestions. There is another drawback with using a calc field...the loss of any text formatting within the calc field. I'm going to cut the field into smaller pieces, since there doesn't appear to be a solution that keeps the text formatting in place. Thanks again.