9 May 2017: Today’s release of FileMaker 16 introduces new windowing options, and changes to existing windowing behavior… some of these are cross-platform, and some are specific to FileMaker for Windows.
Demo file: FM-16-Windowing.zip (requires FM 16 or later)
Editor’s note: I am thrilled to feature a guest article by Beverly Voth.
In the article “An In-Depth Look at “Export Field Contents” (here), the study of how FileMaker exports text as single field contents is compared to the standard FileMaker Exports. Some of these present a problem when the field (exported) gets converted to something which a receiving system may reject as invalid. Several methods and alternative “fixes” are presented, including using XML & XSLT.
Update! NEW IN FMP 16 – we have a FIX!
There is a new function in FileMaker Pro (and Advanced) 16 that “fixes” a couple problems with Export Field Contents (namely the encoding and end-of-line). Instead of the Base64 nested function trick use the new Function:
TextEncode( text ; encoding ; lineEndings )
Reference: FM16 Help: TextEncode
Using TextEncode() & Export Field Contents
Set Field [ container ; TextEncode ( text ; encoding ; lineEndings ) ]
This is a follow up to last week’s part 6, with three refinements.
29 Mar 2017: this file (Excel Exports, v6d) fixes a formatting bug when currency values < 1000 are not preceded by a “$”. Explanation forthcoming in next week’s “part 7” article.
Recently I was asked to implement user-friendly Excel exports on a WAN-based solution, utilizing some of the techniques explored earlier in this series (part 1, part 1.1, part 2, part 3, part 4 and part 5 — all from five years ago). There was just one problem: while performance was great locally, and okay on a LAN, it was decidedly less-than-satisfactory across a WAN.
Well today we’re going to look at three demos showcasing a brilliant, outside-the-box technique I picked up from Beverly Voth, which is not only significantly faster on a WAN (4x or 5x faster), but also remedies some other shortcomings associated with my earlier approaches.
Demo files:
Author’s note: I’d like to offer a big thank you to Christian Schmitz of Monkeybread Software, not only for creating and continually improving a fantastic plug-in, but also for promptly and patiently answering my many questions.
A few weeks ago we looked at creating a table of contents for a PDF containing nine individual reports. The article ended by asking a somewhat rhetorical question…
Now that we have a table of contents for our master report, wouldn’t it be nice if we could hyperlink each TOC entry to its corresponding report within the PDF?
FileMaker doesn’t provide a built-in way to accomplish this, but it can be done using a combination of the MonkeyBread plug-in + DynaPDF Lite, and this will be explored in my next article.
…and today we’re going to dig into the nuts and bolts of what it takes to make this happen.
As usual, we have a demo file (Embedded PDF Links), but since it will only work for developers having licensed copies of the above-mentioned products, here is a PDF showing the end result: Report with Hyperlinked TOC.pdf
Editor’s note: Today I’m pleased to present a guest article and accompanying demo file written by Joel Englander on using ExecuteSQL + a global multi-line key as an alternative to FileMaker’s built-in portal filtering mechanism, with dynamic portal sorting included as an added bonus.
Demo file: fm-sqlportal-filter-and-dynsort.zip (75 Mb compressed, 230 Mb uncompressed)
Given its primary role as a database product, it’s easy sometimes to forget what a great teaching tool FileMaker Pro can be. One of my favorite educational uses for it is building models to explore problem spaces, for example…
..and today we’re going to look at an example of each of these.
Demo Files: Dice Roll, v1 and Dice Roll, v2
Today we’re going to explore a couple ideas that were glossed over in last month’s article on the CustomList custom function…
…and you can download a copy of today’s demo file, Date Filtration, if you are so inclined.
One of the most useful FileMaker features introduced in the last few years is the popover (if you aren’t familiar with them, Howard Schlossberg’s presentation provides an excellent introduction). In the standard implementation, you click once to display the popover, and then click anywhere outside the popover to dismiss it.
If you work with the separation model, or any other multi-file configuration where a layout in file A is based on a table in file B, you may have encountered the following situation: while FileMaker makes it easy to transfer a found set from file A to file B…
…there is no obvious mechanism to go the other direction. Stated in other words, you can easily transfer a found set from an interface (a.k.a. UI) file to a data file, but not vice-versa. Nor for that matter, is there an obvious way to transfer a found set from one UI file to another UI file. Continue reading
Today’s release of FileMaker Pro 15 brings a welcome performance boost in the form of in-line portal progress indicators, a.k.a threaded portals. Ian Jempson (@ianjempson) was kind enough to provide me with a test file that he built, and today’s demo file is based on Ian’s work, and shared with his permission. The purpose of the file is, a) to demonstrate portal threading in FM 15, and b) to explore the behavior of variables instantiated via portal filter calcs and/or object visibility.
Demo file: fm15-portal-threading.zip (7.5 Mb)
