Database Reference
In-Depth Information
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION: PART MANIPULATION
Sometimes when I try to drag a part's separator line up, it won't go. It seems to get stuck. What am
I doing wrong
?
Suppose you want to make a part
smaller
? You can probably guess how: Just drag the part's separat-
or line up instead of down. But sometimes you'll be surprised to discover it won't go as far as you
want.
FileMaker won't let a part get smaller than the stuff on it. For example, if you try to shorten the
Body part on your People layout, then you discover you can't go farther north than the bottommost
field. Once the part separator touches this field, it simply doesn't go higher no matter how far you
drag, because FileMaker doesn't want you to accidentally end up with the fields on a part you didn't
intend.
You can most easily fix this problem when you simply move things out of the way before you resize
the part. For instance, if you want a shorter body, move the fields around first and then shorten the
body.
If you want to be cavalier about it, you can press Alt (Option) while you drag instead. When you do,
FileMaker changes the way it moves parts. Instead of moving everything below the part up or down
to compensate for its new size, everything stays put, and just the dividing line between the two parts
moves. In this way, you can move part boundaries right through other objects to, for example, resize
the body to encompass newly added fields that landed on the footer.
