FileMaker 9 Tips
The newest release of FileMaker is super exciting. We will be posting 9 awesome FileMaker 9 tips over the next few days. Hope you enjoy.
YouTube Roundup
7-17-2008 by
My previous post led me to YouTube, which reminded me of a few screen casts I did for O’Reilly when FileMaker Pro 9: The Missing Manual was released. I could only find two on line, but I thought I’d link them here in case anyone finds them useful.
Alternating Color Based on Alternating Data
6-5-2008 by
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 [...]
Fixing FileMaker PDF Crashes on Mac OS X
5-7-2008 by
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 [...]
Tab Controls without the Tabs
11-2-2007 by
Tab controls have added a wealth of options to FileMaker developers looking to better organize and present data to their clients. The only limitation is that the tabs could only be placed on the top of the tab controls isn’t always ideal. FileMaker 9 provides a much more powerful and interesting way of [...]
Highlighting the Active Field in FileMaker
10-24-2007 by
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, [...]
Stored Calculations and FileMaker Plug-ins
7-31-2007 by
FileMaker Server does some funny things when you create a stored calculation that uses a plug-in. In fact, odds are you received everyone’s favorite invalid character, the ?. This article explains why this occurs and gives some solutions for this rather pesky problem.
Configuring Firewall Ports for FileMaker 9
7-27-2007 by
FileMaker Server 9 represents a pretty significant redesign of the FileMaker Server product line. One consequence of all the changes is that things may not work properly without reconfiguring your firewall(s). Improper firewall configuration can lead to all kinds of problems, some obvious (I can’t connect to my server) and some not-so-obvious (the Server Admin [...]
Custom Page Numbers in PDFs and Printed Reports
7-18-2007 by
In FileMaker 9 Tip #6 we explained how to use the new Append to PDF feature in FileMaker 9. With it, you can build up a PDF file over many steps in a script, to produce a much more complex and data-rich PDF than was ever possible before. One of our readers, Norman Foster, asked [...]
Getting Started with External SQL Sources
7-17-2007 by
On the off chance you’ve been hiding under an old Microsoft Access box for the last couple weeks, let me be the first to tell you that FileMaker now supports direct links to SQL databases. In other words, you can use table from a MySql, Oracle, or Microsoft SQL Server database right in FileMaker with [...]
FileMaker 9 Tip#9: Web Viewers without the Web
7-12-2007 by
Another day, another awesome new FileMaker 9 feature. Today’s special: so called data URLs. In a nutshell, you don’t need a web site to use web viewers anymore. Now they can easily (read: without crazy exports and obscene path hacks) show data pulled right from the FileMaker database itself. This is, like, way cooler than [...]
