Alternating Color Based on Alternating Data

An interesting question popped up on the TechNet discussion list this evening:

>I have a list of records with dates, which often repeat from one record to the next. I want all the same dates to be one colour. Then the next date would be another color. The background color of the date field would alternate from one color to the other as the date changes.

I’ve never run in to this need before, but it sounds like something that would come in handy. It also proves to be just enough FileMaker challenge to be interesting. Here’s how to make it work.

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Fixing FileMaker PDF Crashes on Mac OS X

FileMaker’s `Save Records as PDF` script step is, like, totally awesome. But there’s one teeny tiny issue: it sure likes to crash. We use this feature *a lot* with our customers, and under the right set of circumstances, we can see crashing on half or more of the machines our scripts run on. Luckily, it turns out this problem is easy to fix. It is such a frequent problem that I thought I’d save the googlers of the world some time and write up the solution here.

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Restoring Active Tab State

> Out of Date: If you’re using FileMaker Pro 10 or later, you can accomplish the goal in this article more easily using script triggers. See [this newer article](http://sixfriedrice.com/wp/script-triggers-monitoring-and-restoring-tabs/) for details.

If you use Tab Controls a lot (and don’t we all?) then you may have run into a little snag: When you switch to a different layout, then come back again, the default tab panel comes back to the front. This is usually not a big deal. But sometimes you have a script that switches layouts just for a moment. When this script runs, the user never sees the layout change, but they *do* see the tab control mysteriously bounce back to its home base. This article shows you how to fix this problem once-and-for-all.

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FileMaker Gets Bento

Many people were surprised by Tuesday’s announcement from FileMaker Inc.: A new “desktop database” application called [Bento](http://bentotrial.com). Nobody I know had any idea this was in the works, and I’m pretty sure it is the first product from FMI that is not directly FileMaker Pro related since Claris Organizer was released back in 1827 or thereabouts. For a FileMaker announcement, Bento is getting [a](http://www.macworld.com/2007/11/firstlooks/bento/index.php) [lot](http://daringfireball.net/2007/11/bento) [of](http://macintouch.com/#prod.2007.11.13.bnt) [coverage](http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/11/13/first_look_filemakers_bento_personal_database_for_leopard.html) in the Mac media. Here’s our take.

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Highlighting the Active Field in FileMaker

One of the common complaints our customers have is that they can’t tell which field they are in when using FileMaker. Before FileMaker 9, there was no way to fix this for them. With the addition of conditional formatting, not only can you highlight the active field but you can make it bold, a different color or perhaps even enlarge the font.

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Making FileMaker Object Grids Behave

There’s a lively discussion on the [TechNet](http://filemaker.com/technet/) mailing list right now about the pros and cons of FileMaker Pro’s *Object Grids* feature. This is certainly an opinionated discussion, and there is clearly no “right” way. A lot of people find Object Grids *annoying* because it makes it *harder* to line things up sometimes. Here’s a quick tip to help get Object Grids to behave themselves. I love Object Grids, and leave them on almost all the time, but I don’t think I’d feel this way without the little trick explained here.

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