Header Obscura: One Solution for a FileMaker Go Challenge | Colibri Solutions

James Wesolowski of Colibri Solutions found and solved a FileMaker Go 13 header preview problem.  And wants to know if anyone else has found a better solution…

The Task

We want to hide the column headers on the terms and conditions pages. That’s no problem in FileMaker Pro 13. In our print and output to PDF scripts, we added the following familiar script steps after we navigate from the parent BOL record to its related line items using the BOL Print layout:

Enter Preview Mode [ ]
Go to Record/Request/Page [Last]
Set Variable [ $$PageCount; Get ( PageNumber )]

Then we open the Inspector, and using the new Hidden Objects element in FileMaker 13, hide everything in the header part on the terms and conditions page using the calculation:

Get ( PageNumber ) = $$PageCount

Since our client’s terms and conditions section runs over two pages, we define the calculation as:

Get ( PageNumber ) >= $$PageCount – 1

NOTE: If the header elements are text, you can use the same calculations in FileMaker Pro 12 using Conditional Formatting.

Our Challenge For FileMaker Go

Unfortunately, you cannot enter Preview mode in FileMaker Go 13. So J. Sciarra developed a different way to derive the determine when to hide the header elements using a technique he calls Header Obsura. For FileMaker Go 13, we create a new number field called Obscura. In the print or PDF scripts for Go, we set Obscura to 1 in the last line item record:

Header Obscura: One Solution for a FileMaker Go Challenge | Colibri Solutions.