Helpfull Harry told in a previous post, never print a portal !! ok, I have
been using that for years, but now i'm changing from FM6 to 8.5 and
rebuilding my solution from 12 files to 1 files with tables.....

How will I print list data from 2 tables in one page.

I have a page with customer info and Job info
from the job I link to the list of what equipment is in that job (Portal #1)
and from the 1st equipment I link to another table (portal #2) to list all
accessories require to be prepare for that job.

How can I do this in one page, without printing a portal ??

Is there new feature un FM8.5 that I don't know ??

Thank you

In article <ETd3h.84131$BI3.985744 (AT) wagner (DOT) videotron.net>,
"JF" <bizouman_takethisout (AT) hotmail (DOT) com> wrote:

You can print layouts that have portals, but there are limitations. The
portal as printed will only display the rows that are visible in the
portal, starting with the top row.

If you want to print all the related records in a list, then you need to
print from a layout of the related table, preferably a layout that is
set up as a columnar list/report.

In your case, with two different sets of related tables, Equipment and
Accessories, you would need to print from two different sets of related
tables, and so would have two different printouts.

It seems to me that the assignment of Tools to Jobs and Accessories to
Jobs are many-to-many assignments, that is, one tool can be assigned to
many jobs, and one job can have many tools, and likewise for
Accessories. I assume you have a table for Jobs, a table for Tools and a
table for Accessories, and these are linked by Join tables that connect
Tools to Jobs and Accessories to Jobs.

In that case, you have one record in the Job_Tool join table for each
assignment of a tool to a job, and likewise for accessories.

In that case, you should probably set up your columnar list/reports
based on the join table for each: The Job_Tool join table and the
Job_Accessory join table. That way you will get one row for each
assignment of tool to job, etc. You can put identifying fields from the
Job table in the header of the layout, and identifying fields from the
Tool or Accessory table in the rows of the list/report.

You might consider combining the tables for Tools and Accessories. There
may be good business reasons for not doing this, but perhaps it would
make sense. In that case you would include a field in the table to
indicate whether the item is a tool or an accessory. You could display
that field in the columnar list/report layout, and sort the list based
on the content of that field.

Be aware that in FMP 7/8, you can reach across several steps in a
relationship chain to get fields from related records "downstream" in
the chain, and put those related records into lists and portals, without
the need to have calculation fields in in the tables in between to carry
the information up the chain, as you had to do in earlier versions of
FMP. You do need to be careful about ambiguity in doing this. It only
works properly if these is only one record in the "downstream" table
that is related to the table in between. But if you set it up correctly
it is very powerful. You can do Find and Sort operations based on these
downstream related tables.

Also be aware that scripts work in the context of the "active" table
occurrence when the script is running. This can produce strange and
erroneous results (or no results at all) if you do not take it into
account. It is important to include "Go to Layout" steps in the script
whenever you need to change the context in which the script is
operating. Always specify in a script the starting layout, and specify a
new layout at each point in a script where you need to change the
context for subsequent steps.

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Bill Collins