Copy merge fields content to clipboard with line breaks

[Spoutnik]

Hello everyone,

My company uses File Maker to keep a record of customers' addresses. When looking at a given customer, I would like to be able to copy the whole address block (as displayed on screen) to be able to paste it somewhere else (for instance, in an email, or on a Word document).

You can't do this from the layout for data entry, but we have another layout showing the address block as a succession of merge fields (see screen shot). I added a copy button, all it does is copy what's on screen to the clipboard.

The problem is that, even though the layout is separated by carriage returns like this:

<<contact>>
<<name>>
<<street>> (etc)

When I copy and paste I get a succession of data separated by empty spaces (tabs), like this:

contact      name      street

Is there a way to add a line break between the merge fields so when I copy and paste to Word or else, I get this instead?

contact
name
street

Apologies if this is very simple, I am completely new to File Maker.

Any pointers would be gratefully appreciated!

Cheers

[comment]

Basically, you have two options here:

1. Define a field that contains the text you want and copy from there. This could be a calculation field =

List ( contact ; name ; street ; zip ; country )

or a global text field that your script would set to the above result just before copying it.

 

2. Use AppleScript to build/modify your clipboard (assuming all your users are on Mac OS - otherwise you will need to use a plugin).

 

Edited May 27, 2016 by comment

[Spoutnik]

Hello Comment,

Thank you so much for your reply. I went for the first option and it works perfectly! I changed the copy button so that it selects and copy the whole address block. I'm so pleased, it was really time consuming to manually edit breaks before. Thank you again.

Cheers