Recently we’ve looked at two methods to generate a “faux” subsummary to address a shortcoming of FileMaker native subsummaries… namely that in a multipage report you can have orphaned entries at the top of a given page with no indication of what parent entity they belong to.
The methods were documented here:
One limitation of both the above approaches is that they only worked with fixed-height report rows. Well today we have a nice, outside the box solution from Daniel Wood that does not suffer from this limitation.
Demo file: Faux-Subsummaries-with-Variable-Height-Rows.zip (requires FM 16 or later)
When we click Run Report, here’s an example of what we will see.
One thing I like about this demo is how apparently lightweight Daniel’s approach is (I say apparently because there’s more going on than is initially obvious).
Here’s the script:
Here’s the layout…
…and you’ll note that the layout consists of a header, a body part… and nothing else. The faux subsummary is implemented via a do-nothing single-segment button bar, taking advantage of a button bar’s ability to calculate segment labels. Here’s the label calculation…
…and at this point you may be wondering, “Is that really all there is to it?” Good question, and the answer is, “No, not quite.” Did you notice the little eyeball icon on the button bar? An important chunk of the heavy lifting takes place here, as you can see in Daniel’s nicely-commented and eloquently-formatted “Hide Object when” calculation:
When you see genius functioning at this level, the appropriate response is humble contemplation and reverential silence. This is an instructive work of art. Thank you Daniel.