Print Preview in long text document

[Kathy McClure]

Hello,

I have created a long construction contract for a customer using a text
box and merge fields.It has numbered paragraphs. The contract consists
of a Title Header, Header and Body. The length of the document depends
on the amount of items going into the job. I have set the text box and
the individal items to slide up based on all above and to reduce the
body part.

Depending on how many items are in the contract, I knew we would have to
do some adjustments to make the numbered items appear correctly (like
wordprocessor widow/orphan feature, which FM does not offer) However,
the real problem is that the document is not printing the way it appears
in Preview Mode. Once we make the adjustments in Layout Mode and go to
Preview, it looks great but prints with different line breaks.

Hopefully someone can shed some light on this.

Thanks

Kathy

[John Weinshel]

Hi Kathy,

You don't state version or platform, although I seem to remember you prefer
Macs. Are you, by any chance, seeing this problem on OS X (which brought a
raft of printing issues, many still unresolved)?

In any event, Filemaker is not a word processor, and the lists are full of
problems like this-- complex arrangements of text that do not print
properly. It's not impossible you will eventually get it to work properly by
simply mis-building it until it prints the way you want it to, regardless of
what the Preview shows. But you may well do better to build these documents
in a word processor like Microsoft Word and push the Filemaker values over
using EZxslt ([url]http://www.chapsoft.com/ezxslt/index.html[/url]), which requires
Filemaker 6.

--
John Weinshel
Datagrace
Vashon Island, WA
(206) 463-1634
Associate Member, Filemaker Solutions Alliance


"Kathy McClure" <klm@cruzio.com> wrote in message
news:3F72E9D8.6070904@cruzio.com...

> Hello,
>
> I have created a long construction contract for a customer using a text
> box and merge fields.It has numbered paragraphs. The contract consists
> of a Title Header, Header and Body. The length of the document depends
> on the amount of items going into the job. I have set the text box and
> the individal items to slide up based on all above and to reduce the
> body part.
>
> Depending on how many items are in the contract, I knew we would have to
> do some adjustments to make the numbered items appear correctly (like
> wordprocessor widow/orphan feature, which FM does not offer) However,
> the real problem is that the document is not printing the way it appears
> in Preview Mode. Once we make the adjustments in Layout Mode and go to
> Preview, it looks great but prints with different line breaks.
>
> Hopefully someone can shed some light on this.
>
> Thanks
>
> Kathy
>

[Howard Schlossberg]

There might be a number of reasons for this. Perhaps your printer is
using adifferent font (built-in font?) then your monitor is using?

If you find that isn't the issue (or even if it is), you can try setting
the line height of all text and fields on the layout to pixels rather
than lines. In other words, select your fields, go into Format > Line
Spacing > Custom and make sure the line spacing height is set to an
appropriate number of pixels rather than to the default '1 line'.

And make sure the page margins on your layout aren't so small that the
printer can't handle them.


Kathy McClure wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I have created a long construction contract for a customer using a text
> box and merge fields.It has numbered paragraphs. The contract consists
> of a Title Header, Header and Body. The length of the document depends
> on the amount of items going into the job. I have set the text box and
> the individal items to slide up based on all above and to reduce the
> body part.
>
> Depending on how many items are in the contract, I knew we would have to
> do some adjustments to make the numbered items appear correctly (like
> wordprocessor widow/orphan feature, which FM does not offer) However,
> the real problem is that the document is not printing the way it appears
> in Preview Mode. Once we make the adjustments in Layout Mode and go to
> Preview, it looks great but prints with different line breaks.
>
> Hopefully someone can shed some light on this.
>
> Thanks
>
> Kathy
>

--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Howard Schlossberg (818) 883-2846
FM Pro Solutions Los Angeles, California
Associate Member, FileMaker Solutions Alliance

[William Maslin]

In article <3F72E9D8.6070904@cruzio.com>,
Kathy McClure <klm@cruzio.com> wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I have created a long construction contract for a customer using a text
> box and merge fields.It has numbered paragraphs. The contract consists
> of a Title Header, Header and Body. The length of the document depends
> on the amount of items going into the job. I have set the text box and
> the individal items to slide up based on all above and to reduce the
> body part.
>
> Depending on how many items are in the contract, I knew we would have to
> do some adjustments to make the numbered items appear correctly (like
> wordprocessor widow/orphan feature, which FM does not offer) However,
> the real problem is that the document is not printing the way it appears
> in Preview Mode. Once we make the adjustments in Layout Mode and go to
> Preview, it looks great but prints with different line breaks.
>
> Hopefully someone can shed some light on this.
>

You might try these:

Go to Layout Setup and click "Fixed page margins" and set them all to .5
inches.

Use standard cross platform (ie Windows) fonts like Times New Roman.
Nothing fancy.

If possible, concatenate all the text fields, section headings, etc.
into one giant text field. Make this field as long as necessary and set
it to slide up. Thus, you only have to deal with one sliding field
rather than many.

You will have to move the field up or down on the layout a couple of
pixels at a time to find the spot where Filemaker won't cut through the
middle of a line.

Bill
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