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Tips and tricks

Get to Know Layout Mode
This collection of tips will get you started on your exploration of Layout mode.
By Stuart Gripman

Most FileMaker Pro users spend the bulk of their time in Browse mode with brief excursions out to Find and Preview modes. FileMaker Pro developers by contrast, spend a great deal of time in Layout mode. Layout mode is where you create the look and experience of your database. Like most of FileMaker Pro, Layout mode runs deep if you dig a little. This collection of tips will get you started on your exploration.

Parts
When you create a new layout, FileMaker Pro provides you with the familiar Header, Body, and Footer parts. The Header and Footer appear at the top and bottom of the layout and the top and bottom of each page when printed. The Body part repeats once for each record in the found set. Useful, sure, but do you know the other five layout parts?

Title Header/Footer
Frequently when I'm designing a report, I want to include information and logos on the first page that are unnecessary on subsequent pages. The Title Header and Title Footer parts provide that option. Each Title part prints only on the first page, replacing the standard Header and Footer if present. In Browse mode, Title Headers and Footers display in Form view, but not in List view or Table view.

Summary parts
FileMaker Pro includes three Summary layout parts, one component of reports. Summary reports are outside the scope of this column, so I won't cover them in detail here. The fundamental concept behind Summary parts is that they display aggregate information about your found set -- things such as totals and averages. It's important to note that Summary parts only appear in Layout mode and Preview mode; FileMaker Pro hides them in Browse and Find modes.

View options
Things start to get interesting in the View menu. FileMaker Pro offers myriad options to customize your work environment. Some layout helpers include:

Page margins
Selecting this option displays your layout in a quasi-preview mode. You'll see the entire paper size selected in Page/Print Setup with the page margins in grey.

Graphic Rulers and Ruler Lines
This pair of settings places rulers on the top and left edges of the layout and draws a grid in the work space. They're tremendously helpful when you need consistent placement of fields and objects in and among your layouts.

Object Info (formerly Object Size)
Choose Object Info and you'll get a small floating window containing the size, placement, and name, of the selected object. What makes this little window so powerful is that you can type numbers directly into it and the object changes accordingly. It's an invaluable tool for layout consistency. Say you're placing a logo on several layouts and it must be in the exact same place on each. Simply place it on the first layout and note its position. Now when you place it on other layouts, you can use the Object Info window to precisely set its coordinates.

The Show submenu
You'll find a wealth of useful tidbits tucked inside the "Show" submenu. The choices here affect how you'll see various layout objects drawn in Layout mode.

Sample Data
Have you ever flipped back and forth between Layout and Browse modes trying to make a field just the right size for its data? Well, turn on Sample Data and your fields will display your actual data instead of the field names. Specifically, FileMaker Pro will display data from the last record you visited in Browse mode. If a given field doesn't yet have data, FileMaker Pro will make up something catchy such as "Accessible power."

Buttons
Show buttons? Shouldn't that be obvious? Well, not necessarily. Sure you can use the button tool to drag out a button, but in FileMaker Pro, almost any layout object can be a button. So how can you tell what's a button and what isn't? Activate this option and everything that's a button will get a grey outline in Layout mode.

Non-printing objects
If you've configured some layout objects to not print, they'll get the same grey outline I described above when you select this item.

The Toolbars submenu
Toolbars. There seems to be scant middle ground between those who like them and those who don't. Me, I'm not toolbar people, but I enjoy the Toolbar submenu because I can use it to get palettes. By default, FileMaker Pro toolbars are docked at the top of the screen, but grab one with your cursor and drag it to the middle of the screen. What was a toolbar becomes a floating palette. You can resize the palette to give it a more vertical shape and drag it around to wherever you want it. Two of those toolbars are particularly handy.

Text Formatting
Without the Text Formatting toolbar, formatting text in FileMaker Pro requires navigating various submenus. The text formatting toolbar puts fonts, font sizes, colors, alignment, and spacing a single click away. It's a huge time saver.

Arrange
Most of the Arrange menu commands are available on the Arrange toolbar. Grouping, locking, layering, rotating, and aligning are all right there. In future versions, I hope we can look forward to resizing and distribution to come out of the menus and on to the toolbar.

Layout mode is easily tamed
There's more to Layout mode than meets the eye. Get in there and spend some time familiarizing yourself with the possibilities. You're sure to find some tools you didn't know you had and new ways to work more enjoyably and efficiently. Explore, experiment, and have fun!