July 10, 2018
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This is a really useful shortcut. I think it should be built in to Mac OS, but until the powers that be get around to doing this, you can add this feature for yourself. It is now second nature for me to go Command P, Command P to create a PDF.
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July 4, 2018
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…using the Google Chart API Javascript library to generate a decent looking Org Chart right in FileMaker Pro.
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June 8, 2018
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FileMaker 17 introduces a useful new feature called “Create Directories” when creating files. This works with saving a copy or clone of the database, as well as exporting PDFs or text files. I decided this was a good time to update my old Backup database script. I use this script when developing locally. If I […]
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November 8, 2017
Comments Off on How to Download a Batch of Instagram Photos in Safari on a Macintosh
Now that Instagram allows you to view your Saved Bookmarked photo collection in a web browser, here is a method of downloading your favorite photos to your hard drive. Safari: Preferences With Safari open, go to the Safari menu and select ‘Preferences’. Advanced tab: Turn on “Show Develop Menu…” option In the Advanced tab, select […]
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November 8, 2017 Comments Off on How to Upload Photos to Instagram from Safari on a Macintosh Computer
Note: Sorry FileMaker readers, this is a little off topic. It is in the general realm of minor hacking, so perhaps some of you might find it useful. For some reason Instagram is still insisting on users posting photos only from their mobile devices. Something about their walled garden, where they don’t want people to […]
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July 26, 2017 Comments Off on Ever wish there was a way to ‘Send to FileMaker’ from your Web Browser?
Turns out there is a fairly easy way to do this. It involves creating a bookmark in your web browser that is written in Javascript. It calls a FileMaker script using the URL scheme ‘FMP’ and sends the web page title, and the page’s URL to FileMaker. Once you have this in FileMaker, you can […]
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June 10, 2017 9 Comments
Add a free open source calendar to Filemaker Pro databases by using the Web Viewer.
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November 30, 2015 Comments Off on How to Automate Saving the First Page of a Batch of PDFs as JPGs
Not specifically a FileMaker challenge today, this is an Apple Macintosh Automator/Shell Script routine. I recently had the requirement of generating a set of images for a large set of PDFs—I just needed the first page of a batch of PDFs converted into JPG files.
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November 16, 2015 7 Comments
To get around the problem of having a many-to-many relationship you need to break apart the many-to-many relationship into two one-to-many relationships. Using a third table, commonly called a “join table”, does this. Each record in the “join table” would have the foreign key fields of the two tables it is joining together.
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November 11, 2015 2 Comments
This idea has been documented before, (Using a Web Viewer as a Field) but I rediscovered it myself recently and thought I might have something to add. As was pointed out in The Support Group article, sometimes as a developer, you want to display a long chunk of text (anything that requires scrolling within a field) to the user, but not allow them to edit that text. Some examples might include displaying a block of help text, or a long software agreement. It is obviously possible to format your text using HTML to achieve this effect, but that can become complicated especially if you are not that good at HTML. Fortunately FileMaker offers a much simpler way to display formatted text this using the GetAsCSS function.
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October 19, 2015 4 Comments
A while back, I did a blog entry on capturing Caller ID to look up FileMaker database contacts using a VOIP system. I thought it might be interesting to see if the same thing could be done with just a mobile phone, such as an iPhone or Android device.
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August 24, 2015 2 Comments
Communicating with your FileMaker application developer or other users of a database system can be greatly facilitated by the use of screenshots. Sending a screenshot from FileMaker Go is fairly easy to accomplish, if you know the secret of capturing. Here is how to do it.
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August 17, 2015 4 Comments
Someone suggested using the combination of FileMaker 14’s new button bar with a slide panel to emulate a tab panel. Why bother you ask? Well you get the cool slide animation effect.
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August 13, 2015 1 Comment
The beauty of the FileMaker Platform is that in a few hours you can create an ‘app’ …
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August 10, 2015 Comments Off on Alphabetic Search Buttons using Button Bars in FileMaker 14
FileMaker Pro 14’s new button bar brings a new twist to an old technique for creating alphabetic searches of your data. Instead of creating 26 individual buttons it is possible to create a single button bar object and then easily reformat it using text style changes or FileMaker CSS style changes. The button bar can also be repurposed to horizontal or vertical layouts. Finally I demonstrate how to use the same script from different contexts to perform different searches — a list search and a portal filter.
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July 17, 2015 3 Comments
Using a Javascript overlay on Google Maps and FileMaker’s URL scheme to channel those coordinates into FileMaker records. Click on a map, add longitude and latitude to FileMaker Pro.
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June 8, 2015 Comments Off on Locked into a FileMaker Go Screen? You Won’t Believe How One User Got Out!
FileMaker Go has a great new features called ‘Reconnect to Server’, which helps keep your database connection open if your iPad/iPhone falls asleep or your WiFi connection gets dodgy. This great new feature can become a problem if your solution sends the user to a layout from which there is no return. Obviously the first step as […]
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June 2, 2015 6 Comments
Rotating Images or PDFs in Containers with Applescript (Mac) In my previous blog post I talked about automating scanner documents into FileMaker container fields using AppleScript. This was based on a customer request. Logging in to that system recently, I noticed that it was fairly common for staff members to scan documents in upside down. […]
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May 25, 2015 Comments Off on Automating Webcam Photo Capture within FileMaker (Windows)
OK folks, here is a hack for you. The Challenge: Capturing images from a web cam into FileMaker on Windows. I was able to achieve this previously on a Mac using AppleScript, but there is no similar easy inter-application scripting language on Windows. FileMaker Go on mobile has the ability to grab photos right from […]
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Set a Keyboard Shortcut for “Save as PDF” in Mac OS
Org Charts in FileMaker Pro
How to Download a Batch of Instagram Photos in Safari on a Macintosh
