Formatting Child Record

[Victor Clarke]

Hi

I am very new to TapForms – trying to use the trial version to see if it will do what I need for a project I am working on. So far so good, but I have hit a couple of problems.

My data is confidential, so I have described based on a simple typical example below.

I have created two forms. One has a list of people, unique person id, name, address etc. The second lists the titles that each person holds (each person can have multiple titles). Contains unique person id, a title number (each title has a unique number so I can see who holds the same titles and the actual title. I have successfully joined the two forms with a Link to Form field (join type) so I can produce a layout of a single page with the unique customer information at the top of the page, and a list of the titles they hold beneath it (my goal). Three problems arise:

1. The list of titles when printed looks like a spreadsheet, with a column on the left hand side which has a number starting from 1 and going up for each title held (so for example if a person has 30 titles, the numbers are from 1 to 30). It looks very much like the left hand side of an Excel spreadsheet to the left of the A column.

How do I format this sheet to remove the list of numbers?

2. The list has a slider at the bottom to allow me to move across the page. I suspect this is because some of my titles are too wide to fit. Can I text wrap (as you would in Excel) or else can I specify a maximum width (so that text to the right is cut off). As I intend to print this as a report, having a slider is on no real value to me.

3. Most of the data is in standard english letters. However the titles are in Ancient Egyptian letters. I have been able to edit the font on the child record to use the relevant font. However when I change the font, all 3 columns change font (ie the unique person id and the title number are also converted into Ancient Egyptian. Is there any way to specify the font only for one column when you add the Link to Form field to a layout?

And a bonus question – at present from what I can see to design a layout for printing, it can only be 1 page long. That is fine for most of my data, with most people only holding 5-10 titles. However a small number of people have 60 plus titles, and will wrap onto a second page.

Ideally, when this happens, the layout would flow over automatically onto a second page. I can’t see any way to do this in TapForms. I think I can work around it, either by adding a manual second page list of titles for the small number of people from word, or designing a second layout just for those people, and only importing their “extra” titles (ie whatever number of titles won’t fit on a page) into it.

Thanks in advance for any help.

[Brendan]

Hi Victor,

Thanks for giving Tap Forms a try!

1. I’m not sure why you’re seeing numbers printed. The numbers display on the custom layout, but are removed when printing. So you should only see the columns.

2. The font is only assignable at a table level, not at a column level for the Link to Form field. I understand how you would want different fonts for different fields though. I’ll have to think about how to implement that properly.

Bonus answer. Yes, each layout can only be one page long. In my next update I’ve added the ability for you to link custom layouts together for printing purposes. That is, you can setup multiple custom layouts and tell Tap Forms what the Next Print Page is. When you print Layout 1, Layout 2 and so on will be automatically printed next. But that won’t allow the content to automatically flow to the next page though. That’s definitely something I want to build into a more advanced printing engine.

Improving the printing engine to allow for layouts to flow and rows to automatically adjust their height based on the content is something I plan on building for a future update. Haven’t started it yet though.

Thanks!

Brendan

[Victor Clarke]

Hey Brendan

Firstly thanks for your quick answers. I was about to give up on TapForms, as the two different fonts in one table was vital to me (mixing English script and Ancient Egyptian in one table without the two different fonts is not a good look).

However I found a work around. I basically created two tables, one for the column I need in English script and one for the table I need in Ancient Egyptian, and put them beside each other in the custom layout. Didn’t align perfectly initially, but by playing around with the font I selected for English script, I was able to find one that created rows of the same height, and now they align perfectly. So far so good (I still have to do a couple of other smaller tables for the page, but they should be much easier, as all in English script, and only a few rows long.

A couple of formatting questions:
. Is it possible to hide the header in the table so it doesn’t print the field names?
. When I create the table, it by default puts a line between the header and the values. I don’t want that (as it is inconsistent with my format for the other fields I have on the page). Is it possible to hide that line. I have tried to do so by creating a text box and putting it over it, which sort of works, put not great (can’t seem to go as far out to the right as the table).

And a bonus question (I am expecting the answer to be no!). I am using this to create an appendix for a PhD to put in all the data (large number of pages), with one page of data per person. All my other tables in the PhD (which are created in Tableau if you know it) are formatted so that every second row of the table is shaded light grey ie you have one row of text with no background, and one row text with a light grey background. It would be nice for my data pages to have the same format (but it is not essential). Is there a feature I am missing in TapForms that does this?

Regards

Victor

(ps I am expecting to be able to get this to work, in which case I will subscribe to the paid version – I am currently on a trial version.

pps – when I signed up I thought it said the trial was for 30 days, but it seems to have only given me 10 days?)

[Brendan]

Hi Victor,

I’m glad you found a workaround for your font issue. I’ll definitely think about how to offer the ability to format each column separately.

1. If you disable the Stroke option on the table view that’ll remove the borders, except it still leaves a divider line between the header and the content rows. The same for a line between the content rows and the footer. But you can draw a rectangle (not a text box) with no stroke and a white fill to hide the divider line when printed.

2. There is an ‘alternating rows’ function but at the moment I see that it’s not doing that for related tables on a custom layout. It does on the Default Layout and when using the “Table of records” layout. I’ll have to look into that for custom layouts. You can toggle that setting on the Options tab of the Print window.

The free trial version has always been for 10 days. Not sure where it said 30 days. If you let me know then that would be helpful so I can change it.

Thanks!

Brendan

[Christopher Clark]

Bonus answer. Yes, each layout can only be one page long. In my next update I’ve added the ability for you to link custom layouts together for printing purposes. That is, you can setup multiple custom layouts and tell Tap Forms what the Next Print Page is. When you print Layout 1, Layout 2 and so on will be automatically printed next. But that won’t allow the content to automatically flow to the next page though. That’s definitely something I want to build into a more advanced printing engine.

Improving the printing engine to allow for layouts to flow and rows to automatically adjust their height based on the content is something I plan on building for a future update. Haven’t started it yet though.

Brendan, has there been movement on having a record be able to have 2-page layout or bleed to print on the next page?

[Brendan]

Hi Christopher,

No I’m sorry, I haven’t worked on the printing engine yet.

Thanks,

Brendan

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