Level: Beginner, Version: FM 11 or later

Manage Layouts… really

With the release of FileMaker 10, the “Set Layout Order” command, which had quietly lived under the Layouts menu for countless generations (only accessible from layout mode), was moved from its comfortable home and given a new name: Manage Layouts

One advantage of this change, was that the command could be accessed from any mode, rather than just when in layout mode. But apart from that, no additional functionality was added above and beyond what had been available in FileMaker 9.

The good news is that Manage Layouts has become much more useful in FileMaker 11, and now, truly does what its name implies, as per the buttons along the bottom of the dialog.

My favorite of these by far, incidentally, is the ability to highlight one or more layouts and then open each of them in a new window. I find this to be a huge time saver.

Another improvement worth noting is that there is now a keyboard shortcut to invoke Manage Layouts: Ctrl+Shift+L on Windows and Cmd+Shift+L on the Mac.

1 thought on “Manage Layouts… really”

  1. And yet you can click all day on the column headers (Layout Name, Associated Table and Menu Set) with no effect. What’s the point of making those headers clickable buttons? If that were a layout it would be pretty lame!

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.