At 9:29 PM -0800 12/10/00, Scott and Judy Whiting wrote:
>1. When we follow the directions to open form letters (opening FMP as
>"master", selecting "mode" and "layouts" we do not have access to the
>numbered letters in the drop down menu above the "rolodex". In fact, there
>is nothing to scroll through, but we can see other items in layout mode if
>we click on the rolodex cards. We never see "Letter #1" (etc.) even when we
>use this method. We have been able to use the drop down menu above the
>rolodex in an older version of our backups, but we can no longer access it
>in any current version of our files. Does this indicate corrupted eBase
>files? Suggestions?
Layouts such as Letter #1, etc live in a particular file. The
numbered letter layouts are contained in the names_.102 file. Thank
you letters are contained in the paymnts_.102 file. Are you in one of
those files when you go to layout and page through the rolodex?
>2. If we find, for example, "Letter #7" by the manual method which we
>believe is a letter that has no pre-set formatting or merged fields, we can
>create a document using Microsoft Word, then we cut and paste it into
>"Letter #7". We can make some revisions using the "A" tool but we don't
>really understand what should be done in Word and what can be done in
>eBase. For example, we have not successfully changed text to bold or italic
>and had it print in the letter.
You won't be able to import formatted text, but you can format the
text at the character level in FileMaker. Makes most sense, I think,
to write the letter directly onto the FileMaker layout (or perhaps in
a word processor then copy & paste the text into FileMaker) the
formatting the text in FileMaker. You format text as you do in a word
processor, select the text and selecting the option from the Format
menu.
>We believe our problem is related to our
>first question, but we also wonder if we should be using "paste special" in
>Word and pasting as an RTF document (formatted text), of if we should
>"Paste Document", either choice being under the "edit" menu when we are in
>"layout" mode.
No, just create the letter in FileMaker, or paste text-only into the
layout using Paste.
>By the way, we can access the various Thank You Letter #x's
>via drop down menus when we get to them via "Payments" to "Print" "Thank
>You" then "Mode" to "Layout" and using the drop down menu under the rolodex.
Those are the Thank-You letters. The Solicitation letter formats
(Letter 1, etc.) should be accessible the same way when in the
names_.102 file.
>
>3. We also cannot use merge fields in our letters whether we create them
>"from scratch" or use the drop down under "edit" for "Paste special" and
>use "Merge Field".
What do you mean "cannot use" the merge fields. Do you place them and
they don't print, or is the merge fields command grayed out of the
menu. Begins to sound as if you aren't really in layout mode.
>
>To date our solutions to these problems have been to export the data and
>fields we want to Excel, then we do a mail merge in Word to generate our
>letters. Karin has created source codes for these events and we have
>successfully (we think) updated our database to track those events because
>we can print envelopes. This seems like a very tedious workaround, and we'd
>like to avoid doing our work this way.
For the short term, you can eliminate one step by exporting directly
to a merge file. This will be formatted correctly for merge,
comma-delimited, with the field names in the first line.
--
Dave Shaw Northwest Classics, Inc
tel: 206-954-7526 fax: 206-625-1338
