2 Replies Latest reply on Apr 2, 2010 12:48 PM by pault

    Question on Automating Report Creation

    pault
    pault Apr 1, 2010 12:55 PM

      Title

      Question on Automating Report Creation

      Post

      Hi All,

      I have a series of reports I generate regularly for each customer.

      The specific customer, report type and report criteria are selected from drop down menus.

      The final result is a PDF file of each report. I have 4 reports for about 20 clients.

       

      Is there a way to automate selecting the criteria and entering a unique name for the PDF file? It gets very tedious doing it all manually. If someone can point me in the right direction it would be greatly appreciated.

       

      I’m an intermediate user using FileMaker 9 on Windows XP.

       

      Thanks,

      PaulTenn

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        • 1. Re: Question on Automating Report Creation
          philmodjunk
          philmodjunk Apr 1, 2010 1:23 PM (in response to pault)

          Item 1, you can script a find and sort process so that records needed for your report are pulled up and sorted in the correct order. Do you know how to write scripts?

           

          Your script would follow this outline:

          Go to Layout [Report Layout]

          Enter find mode[]

          Set field [table::field1 ; Expression ]

          Set Field [Table::Field2 ; Expression ]

          Set Error Capture [on]

          Perform Find[]

          Sort [Restore ; no dialog]

           

          Item 2, you can use a script with Save Records as PDF to save the report in PDF format and you can use a variable such as $Path to name the PDF file:

           

          Set Variable [$Path ;  "file:" & Get ( DesktopPath ) & "Report Name " & Substitute ( Get ( CurrentDate) ; "/" ; "-" ) & ".PDF"]

          Save Records as PDF [Restore ; No Dialog ; $Path ; Automatically Open ; Records being browsed ]

           

          The above example saves the PDF to your desktop as  a file named as Report Name with the current day's date appended to it.

          • 2. Re: Question on Automating Report Creation
            pault
            pault Apr 2, 2010 12:48 PM (in response to pault)

            Thanks very much Phil. I'll give this a try.