Tap Forms Printing Issues

[Dave Teskey]

I am in day 5 of evaluating Tap Forms as a replacement for FileMaker Pro. There seem to be some issues in printing that I wish could be addressed. Hopefully, a future version will accommodate these issues. I noted a blog post from 2017 that alluded to the desire that the “print engine” would be improved in some future release. Please take these points as suggestions for future development. Also, I may be missing some key methods with my short use of this fine product.

1. No matter which Layout you pick, when you print and select “Table of records”, you get the quasi spreadsheet print with rows and columns.

2. If you select the “Default Layout” and choose “Record details or labels”, you get one record per page – no way to print multiple records per page. The “Print Multiple Records” choice seems to pertain to labels when you want each label on a page to contain a unique record as opposed to a page to print a number of identical labels.

3. If you choose “Table of records”, any database with another “linked” database will not print any of the linked database fields. The only way to print any linked database fields on a custom layout is to include one or more of those fields in an “embedded” quasi spreadsheet row (or rows) with one or more of the other database fields in that row. No way to include an individual field from the linked database in the custom layout as a separate formatted field among the other formatted fields in the custom layout.

4. Custom Layout printing using Record details or labels” does not allow any heading with current date, or page number.

5. No “sliding fields” in printing custom layouts to compress vertical space in a text field when some records have more lines than others in that text field. You have to format the report with space for the largest text field in any record and waste vertical space for other records that have less lines in the text field. This is strange because the Default Layout will dynamically adjust the height of a text field on each record.

6. I did get the app to not respond by accidentally creating a custom layout with an item outside the printable area – gross user error.

Any suggestions or work-arounds would be appreciated.

[Brendan]

Hi Dave,

Thanks for the feedback.

1. That’s right. To print a custom layout you need to select the record details option.

2. Yes, that’s right. This is by design. By turning off Multiple Records per Page, you can print the same label over and over again on the page.

3. This is because when you have a Link to Form field, the parent record is one thing, but there can be many child records, so displaying them as a table of values is an appropriate display format. However, on a child form, you can add a Calculation or Script field that references fields from the parent. This works with the One to Many Link Type.

4. That’s right. It’s because normally you use the labels layout to printout labels, so you wouldn’t want a header to be printed at the top of your labels sheet. But I know it would be useful to have a header if you were using the labels layout just to organize the printout differently than just for labels.

5. The Default Layout is dynamically generated, so I can tell the size needed for printing before it’s printed. On a custom layout, you choose the dimensions of every element. But yes, it would be good to have some sort of sliding fields capability. It wouldn’t really work for a custom layout though. At least not in its current design.

6. Hmm… Sorry about that. You can click on the Layers tab to find all objects in your layout, even if they’re outside the printable area and you can delete them from there.

There aren’t really any workarounds for the issues you’ve brought up other than using the Calculation or Script field features.

Thanks,

Brendan

[Author]

Posts