Database Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 8-28. When you preview the report, you quickly see that your nice compact printout is now
very space-inefficient. The Notes field is often empty, or holds just a line of text, but FileMaker re-
serves lots of space for it just in case. Also, if you have lots of notes in one record, then the field
may not be big enough, so the text is cut off. But if you make the field even bigger, then you just
waste more space. Sliding layout objects are the solution.
Normally, a field on the layout takes up a fixed amount of space, no matter how much (or
how little) data is inside. You might be tempted to try to fix this with a merge field, but that
doesn't help here because no matter how tiny the text gets, the Body part is still just as tall as
ever. You need some way for everything on the layout to
slide up
if the Notes field isn't full.
Luckily, FileMaker's Inspector has the answer in the form of the Position tab's Sliding &
Visibility section.
