Dates, social security numbers, state abbreviations and zip codes, and many other data types are basically fixed lengths or nearly so. The dollar (number) fields in my invoicing and banking databases, alas, don’t ever need to store very large values. Many of the fields in a database store values (content) that don’t exceed a certain length. There are two very special cases that definitely want their own layouts for printing: portals and large text fields. I use Verdana a lot for onscreen display, but for reports, I use Helvetica Neue on the Mac or Arial, which is a good font for cross-platform viewing. Such fonts usually do not look so good in print. Verdana and Georgia, for example, are two fonts designed specifically to be viewed on screen.
Third, certain fonts are better for viewing on screen than they are for printing, and vice versa.
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For example, on the data-entry form, you might want to display separate fields for first, middle, and last names, but on a printed report, you may want to concatenate those fields into a single full name.Ī data-entry layout with a number of user-interface elements such as buttons, tabs, and portals, can be printed, but the result is going to be ugly. You may want to place fields on a data-entry form quite differently from the way you want them to print on reports. Your print layout should get rid of buttons, organizational boxes, field shading, on-screen instructions or hints, and perhaps even field labels. Second, data-input layouts usually have a variety of user-interface elements that you don’t want to reproduce on your printed output. So, to make it all work efficiently, make your data-input layouts wide, but build your print layouts tall. You could simply design your data-input layouts to fit those dimensions, but that wastes a lot of horizontal space on screen. There are many reasons for this, and understanding them will help you design better print layouts.įor starters, computer screens are almost always wider than they are tall, but most users want printed reports in portrait orientation, that is, a regulation 8.5-by-11-inch document in the traditional upright position. If your FileMaker database is going to be used to print reports of any kind, you should create special layouts designed exclusively for printing. (Using Bento instead? We’ll cover Bento in a separate article.) Here are a few tips that will help you design attractive and useful printed reports in FileMaker Pro.
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But it’s more challenging to figure out how to create useable printed reports. It’s always been easy to create a straightforward database in FileMaker Pro, and with the enhancements in FileMaker Pro 11, even a newbie can start entering data immediately.
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