My Songbook table has a text field for charts. This would include chords and lyrics.
Some charts may be multiple pages long; others may be less than a page.
I would like to print these out for an accompanist for a gig.
I read in another forum that I need to size the field to the length of the largest entry. In this case (so far) that's three pages. So my field is about 25" long (tall). However, when saving to PDF, there are extra pages inserted. This happens when the field doesn't fill the entire space, but the layout is large enough, thus blank space.
Is there a way to better control this?
Pie-in-the-Sky question: Can I manage where pagination happens within the field?
As you can see, chords are displayed on one line, above the lyrics where the chord changes.
In some cases, the chords will appear at the bottom of one page and the lyrics at the top of the next page.
Also, sometimes verses or phrases are broken in strange places.
Not sure this is something that can be entered in the field itself (i.e., keep this text together) or not, but while I'm asking about the overall report, I thought I'd go for the gold.
Thanks for the referral. It’s not exactly the same situation, though. One record has a field that will fill three pages. I can’t find a way for FileMaker to expand a field dynamically-only shrink one. That’s why I’m stuck.
Exact, no expansion. This is why you need to make the field tall enough to accommodate the tallest text. Did you try that ? The field will adjust to the contents by shrinking.
Thanks, @planteg -I certainly thought that's what I did.
I'm uploading a PDF of the resulting layout. the field, Chart, is yellow for reference. Untitled.pdf (124.2 KB)
I've been trying everything I can think of - sliding, sizing, etc., and can't get this to work.
If I have a record which field whose content might fill three pages, and one page in the next record, I can't seem to get it to output without extra page breaks in the pdf or when printing.
Update and Request for Help: After much pulling and pushing, I've gotten the layout to work, paginate correctly and the large text field shrinking correctly.
There's a new, very weird issue, however, which I've tested in several different Gigs records. One ONE particular Gig, the last two record's lyrics are combined. I don't know how to show this except to share this PDF screen capture of the last two lines of the song "Home" which is followed by the entire set of lyrics for the song "At Last."
"At Last" should start a new page with a new updated header and page number. All previous pages are perfect.
I have absolutely no idea where to start to troubleshoot this issue.
Instead of putting a field on a layout put a text block that crosses multiple page margins, then use Insert Merge field where you want the data.. It will break very nicely. Don't forget to have it slide up to remeoved unused space.
