Love TFP but having some issues

[Paul Cotton]

I’m a recent convert to Tap Forms Pro for macos. I originally used Bento, then moved to Filemaker when they shut that down, and have spent years setting up systems for various things in that. I’ve been unhappy with Claris as a company for years now, but felt locked in with no hope of finding a workable solution to break away. TFP has provided me with a way to do just that.

I am extremely happy with TFP, but I encountered some issues in setting things up – some feel like bugs, some are no doubt just new user error/ignorance.

1) In layout mode, line doesn’t layer on top of other shapes, text or images

2) cmd c + cmd v page elements screws up editing, example:
add a few fields to layout
add rectangle to layout
layer list: clicking in list selects the correct elements in layout
cmd c + cmd v to duplicate rectangle
note that it doesn’t create a new layer for the duplicate
selecting in the layer list is now out of sync with the elements in the layout
going to form view removes the duplicate rectangle
back to layout view and delete the original rectangle – an entry in layers remains
go to form view and the duplicate rectangle is visible again

3) after making a backup of a password protected file via file>backup, on re-opening, the show/hide forms list, display form/layout inspectors, and advanced search buttons are all disabled (can still use drop down menu for these functions)

4) File size seems massive relative to data size. Importing relatively modest csv’s has ballooned the TPF file-size, eg I have a csv with 17,191 records, 3.7MB total, and each record is ~200 characters long. Importing that increased TFP file size by 72.5MB, even after doing a “rebuild search index”. This is an example record:

“max 5-letter word”,””,””,””,”4 characters”,””,””,”email address”,”email address”,”max 60 character term”,”max 60 character term”,”date”,”USD”,”number”,”date”

A different 1MB excel file increased TFP by 10MB. The filemaker database I used was 65MB, including more data than I imported. The two equivalent TFP files total ~250MB.

5) Notes fields do strange things with their margins. When I type to the very right-side edge of the notes field, all of the text jumps to hard-left, removing the lefthand margin. I have to move my cursor close to the left-side edge of the notes field and drag left to move the text back right. Dragging cursor right near right-side edge also moves the text left.

6) A calculation field using + for multiple number fields sums fields until it hits an empty field, then treats that sum so far as text and concatenates the sum so far with the fields after as if text. Is there any way to either have empty number fields treated as 0, or to bulk change all empty fields to 0?

7) Sorting text fields interprets the whole number portion at the beginning of a field rather as characters eg 1word,2word,10word, rather than 1word, 10word, 2word – is there any way to stop this?

8) In note fields set to plain text and a specific font/size, new text defaults to font family=no value, typeface=””, and size=0, rather than the font set in layout view. Also, it does still recognise and store changes of font/style made in sections of the text.

9) I have a form with a subform. The subform has records with dates, the main form has a calculation field that shows the latest date from the subform. This works fine in macos. I used TFP on an iPad, entering data into the subform direct. On reload to mac, it didn’t update the latest date fields when viewing those records.

10) I have a text field that uses a pick list and a script field that listens for changes to that text field. When I change the value, the script isn’t executed – it only executes when I click on the bottom-left “recalculate formulas” button. I looked at the Books Library template and the Sortable Title script field in that behaves the same way for me.

[Paul Cotton]

I’m also having some issues with this forum/site. I just tried to edit my post. On clicking submit it hasn’t changed the post and now I no longer see an “edit” option.

Also, when I go to my name top right of screen and click “edit profile”, it opens this page: https://www.tapforms.com/using-tap-forms-pro/love-tfp-but-having-some-issues/ – which isn’t my profile, just some page with missing images.

(I use safari on macos for browsing).

[Paul Cotton]

Re 9), I see that the ipad element makes no difference. I edited the subform direct on ipad as I couldn’t create a new subform record from within the parent form.

On macos, I just tried adding a record direct into the form that is used as a subform and that didn’t update when I viewed the parent form either.

It didn’t update when I tried multi-column > “recalculate formulas and scripts for all records”.

Some tests did update using the “recalculate formulas” in the parent form – but one time it didn’t.

Sadly that method isn’t practical as it requires my knowing which records are out of sync.

–

Re the forum post edit issue, I see that is just the result of the short editing time window.

• This reply was modified 2 weeks, 6 days ago by Paul Cotton.
• This reply was modified 2 weeks, 6 days ago by Paul Cotton.
• This reply was modified 2 weeks, 6 days ago by Paul Cotton.
• This reply was modified 2 weeks, 6 days ago by Paul Cotton.

[Brendan]

Hi Paul,

I’ll try my best to answer your questions. There’s a lot :)

1. Line does need some work.

2. I’ll look into this.

3. I’ll look into this, but ya, the password protection window hides the toolbar and may not re-display it properly. I’ll have to fix that.

4. Depending on which sync method you’re using, the .tfpro document folder can get quite large as all the sync data is stored within the .tfpro document bundle.

5. If you copied text from a website or other application and pasted it in, the formatting commands, including margins, can also be pasted into the field and have an effect. Are you pasting in rich text content that may have margin content built-in to it?

6. Tap Forms won’t execute the formula if any of the values are nil. You can use the IFEMPTY() function to have Tap Forms return a 0 if the value is empty: IFEMPTY([Value Field]; 0; [Value Field])

7. Are you saying you don’t want natural sorting order? Tap Forms uses the same sorting mechanism as the Finder does to sort files and folders on disk. So the sequence would be 1, 2, 10 instead of 1, 10, 2.

8. Is this on a custom layout or on the Default Layout? Or Universal Layout?

9. If you can send me an example form that demonstrates this issue, that would be very helpful.

10. If you send me a form template (.tff) file of your form, I can take a look at this.

Send to support@tapforms.com

Thanks,

Brendan

[Paul Cotton]

Thanks Brendan – that was a big chunk of stuff I dumped in one go, so I really appreciate your response and the answers that will help me improve how I use TFP.

Re 4 and file size/sync: I just copy the file between devices as I’m never using more than one “live” at a time.

Re 5 and margins: I get this with any note field I add and type text into. I can create a new form, create a note field, add it to layout, go to form view and start typing into the box and the margin will shift when hit the right edge.

Re 7 and sort order for text starting with numbers: ideally I’d prefer an option to have the sort based on individual characters as text for a text field, but this is no biggy – I can just change how I work with it if that’s not an option.

Re 8 and changing font size – I use custom layouts. This is the biggest workflow issue I have as I do a lot of adding to note fields.

Re 9 and 10, I can’t share any of my working data, but I will try to recreate the problem in a way that I can share.

Thanks again for your help and for making TFP in the first place.

[Paul Cotton]

Re 9 and updating latest date, in creating an example from scratch I realised that “recalculate formulas and scripts for all records” from the active form in single col view (rather than multi-col view) does work. I had completely missed that button on single-col view for some reason.

I had an exact copy of the ipad file I brought back, tried it with that and it worked fine so can scratch that one from the list.

• This reply was modified 2 weeks, 3 days ago by Paul Cotton.

[Paul Cotton]

A bit more info about 8) and the changing font in plain text note fields.

The font is changing when text is typed, but when changing to a different record and coming back to it, it shows as per whatever font that layer has been set to in the layout view.

Create new form
New custom layout
Form: Fields: New Field=note > plain text note
Layout: drag Note field to form
Form
Start typing – highlight some text and it shows font:No value/””/0.
Add new record
type something into notes field, again this will show font:No value/””/0
go back to first record and the text of that record will change to Helvetica/Regular/13, that being the default font that the field used when being added in layout view
go back to second record and that is also Helvetica/Regular/13

but typing any new text into either record sill initially shows as font:No value/””/0

• This reply was modified 2 weeks, 3 days ago by Paul Cotton.

[Paul Cotton]

Re 10 – scripts triggering on field change: this was user error and Brendan provided the solution via email.

I was using getId rather then explicitly identifying the field in the script itself:

mine that didn’t work correctly:

var currval=record.getFieldValue(form.getFieldNamed(“Currency”).getId());

Brendan’s solution that works great:

var currval=record.getFieldValue(‘fld-6cc122549b004a09b0e21e8b4f76b313’);

[Author]

Posts