Has this ever happened to you? You have a number of identically named fields in two different tables…
…but when you copy one of those fields from a layout based on the first table…
… and paste it onto a layout based on the second one…
…the result is not what you might have wished for.
When you copy layout elements, FileMaker grabs an XML representation of those elements, including table occurrence (TO) info where appropriate, so what was copied was “CUS::zz_c_header”, not just “zz_c_header”, and the fact that the field shows up as coming from an “unrelated table” on the target layout tells us that “CUS” is not related to the TO the invoice layout is based on.
Of course the field can be manually repointed, and all will be well, but sometimes you find yourself copying/pasting many fields, in which case the following work around could be a real time saver:
- Go into layout mode on the source layout
- Select field(s), copy
- Still in layout mode, go to target layout
- Open the Relationships Graph
- Temporarily rename the source TO
- Temporarily rename the target TO to the original name of the source TO
- Close the Relationships Graph
- Paste onto the target layout
- Open the Relationships Graph and restore original TO names
In case the above isn’t completely clear, I’ve recorded a short demonstration video. It’s a little under 5 minutes in length, and since this is the first time I’ve posted a video, any comments and/or suggestions would be much appreciated. (If for some reason you can’t view the embedded version, you can download or view the full version here: PastingFileMakerLayoutSchema.mp4)
