January 25, 2019
2 Comments
In an ideal world, this data would be published to a JSON file and FileMaker could easily parse that data into records. Unfortunately, many organizations are not there yet, in terms of sharing their data easily. That is where this parsing routine comes in handy.
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December 11, 2018
4 Comments
In keeping with the principle, “Why use a screwdriver, when I have this hammer right here?”, I decided, instead of just downloading a free utility from the Mac App Store, I would build folder creation functionality using FileMaker Pro Advanced 17.
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November 21, 2018
Comments Off on Elapsed Time Display in a Web Viewer
A simple approach, easy to integrate into other FileMaker solutions. A Web Viewer is being sent an HTML page with a Javascript timer displaying the elapsed time. Using the same FileMaker Start Timer script, a Start Time field is set at the same start time and then ended when clicking a FileMaker End Timer button/script.
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November 16, 2018
1 Comment
Why would you want to delete files in the Finder from FileMaker Pro? Once the files are imported into FileMaker, they are removed from the user’s ‘Scanner Document’ folder on the Desktop of their computer.
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November 12, 2018 Comments Off on How to Delete Attachments from Messages in Apple Mail
Someone recently asked me “I have a malware in my MacBook that Sophos can’t deal with and supposedly, they are all in email attachments. I’d like to get rid of any problems.”
Here is how to get rid of just the attachments in Apple Mail.
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September 3, 2018 3 Comments
I watched this short video by Angel City Data and was inspired to create my own Time Picker for FileMaker Go on iOS.
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July 18, 2018 3 Comments
Recently, a friend asked me about automating the export of data from FileMaker to Evernote. A web search found that someone had already figured this out. I thought this might be useful to send data to Notes, the app that I use.
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July 10, 2018 1 Comment
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 Comments Off on Org Charts in FileMaker Pro
…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 Comments Off on Backup FileMaker 17 Databases to the Cloud
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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Scraping Tables – Pulling Data Tables from Web Pages into FileMaker Pro
Building Folder Structures in the Finder with FileMaker Pro 17
Elapsed Time Display in a Web Viewer
Deleting Files from Your Computer Using Native FileMaker Pro
