i've two questions

would you use FM for letter writing ?

I can see advantages
- merge fields
- handy storage of correspondence
- filing of correspondence
- links to other aspects of job or project

Do you put the letter body into a field of its own ? In which case how
big should that field be if you don't know how long the letter will be
?

It's easy to see how FM helps with form letters but not so easy when
its applied to ordinary correspondence.

Am I missing something ?

What about formatting ? I have a problem getting the line-space to
distribute line space evenly.

Any thoughts on this welcome

marmot

marmot <thdyoung (AT) mac (DOT) com> wrote:

I do.

Yes.

As long as I possibly can - there seems to be a limit in layout mode.
The field has to slide, of course.

In a Windows environment, performance was almost zero when the large
field was an the layout, so I use a small field for writing and a large
field in a print layout.
--
http://clk.ch

thanks Christoph

v helpful particularly about writing and printing layouts

marmot

In article <1h9dguc.r4lu4i1dfdzkgN%clk (AT) freesurf (DOT) ch>,
clk (AT) freesurf (DOT) ch (Christoph Kaufmann) wrote:

I would add this:

Make a separate table for letters.

That way you can write any number of individual letters to any number of
people in your contact list.

Relate the Letters records to the Contact records by ContactID. Allow
creation of Letter records via the relationship. Use a portal in a
layout of the Contacts table for creating the letters to that Contact.
Use a layout in the Letters table to format and print the letter.

In the Letters table, put fields for letter date (date field) and letter
content (text field), as well as field for Contact ID, Letter ID, and
others as needed.

An added refinement:

Put text fields for Name, Address, City, State and Zip in the Letters
table, to be automatically filled by lookup or calculation from the
Contacts table. That way, those fields will populate when you create the
letter from the Contact layout. The virtue of this is that the Letter
keeps a historical record of the name and address it was sent to, while
the Contact record can be kept up to date with changes in name or
address.

You may also want to make an Envelope layout in the Letters table, so
that you can easily print an envelope for that letter.

Put navigation buttons on the various layouts to move to the appropriate
related record. Make the buttons non-printing. It is also helpful to
write scripts for printing the letter and the envelope, to get the print
setup correct, and to prompt the user to put either letter paper or
envelope paper in the printer as appropriate.

Bill

--
For email, remove invalid.

totally helpful

thank you Bill: you tips are v gratefully received

marmot