worksheet printing

[jfcorn]

I have a worksheet with 5 fields in each record,
Nmae, street, citystatezip, home phone, cell phone
When I print I would like to force a printer line feed after the citystatezip and
print the phone numbers on the next line then go to the next record and repeat.
Anyone know if this can be done without having to write a basicmaker script?
Thanks
jfcorn

[Jossi]

This task can be done much easier by importing the data into a TextMaker database and doing the printing in TextMaker. There you have all the options you may want.

[jfcorn]

Thanks for your reply, I had some eye surgery and couldn't respond for a good while.

I understand, but I can't find any information on how to do that.
I am attempting to develop a booklet format,
4 columns on a landscape page
down the 1st column then down the 2nd column, etc,
then print a PDF file to send to Adobe for a printing a booklet.
I don't know if this even possible.
I am using a planmaker DBF database as the input database
I have used mail merge for several to print envelopes
but this project has me baffled.
Any idea where I could find instructions for doing this?

[Jossi]

Just to get this right: The resulting booklet shall be in portrait mode with two columns on each page?

[jfcorn]

Correct
The booket prior to going to adobe reader for printing would look like, in landscape;
name 01 .....................name 09..................name 017...................name 25
addr 01
city st zip 01
phone 01

name 02
addr 02
city st zip 02
phone 02
.
.
thru
.
.
name 08..........................name 16...................... name 24 ....................... name 32
addr 08
city st zip 08
phone 08

................page 1...............................................................page 2
( the ........are just place holders in this note)

then continue on next print page 2 with address pages 3 an 4 until all names have been printed
The resulting pages can then be fed to Adobe reader for formatting into a booklet form by Adobe and be ready for folding.

I hope this is not confusing

I have written a program in Lazarus which does this perfectly but I am getting ready to give up this task, for our senior group,
and don't want to have to maintain the Lazarus program, I feel it would be easier for someone to maintain it in Plan/Text Maker.

I just don't know how to get TM to read the DBF file and format the data in the above fashion. Any suggestion or instruction?

Thanks for any advise - jfcorn

[Jossi]

The trick is: As Adobe Reader does all the booklet printing business, you only need a simple single page layout in TextMaker. It is impossible to get a booklet from a two page landscape layout, for then Adobe Reader cannot sort the single pages into the sequence needed for the booklet.

So the step-by-step proceeding is as follows:

1. Save the existing database from PlanMaker as a .csv or .dbf document.
2. Create a new document in TextMaker with the page size you need for a single page of your booklet.
3. Go to Insert > List/label and choose "Output as table". (You may also choose "Output as label" if the space you need for each entry fits one of the offered two column label sizes; "Output as list" is not recommended, as you will get column breaks inside entries.)
4. Click "Database..." and open the database you saved in step 1.
5. Click "Database field" and select the fields you need by clicking on them. They will be inserted into the big box above in curly brackets. These brackets indicate that this is a database field which will change with each entry. Apart from this, the content of the big box is like a text field, so you can add normal text (which will be the same for each entry, e.g. a comma between fields in the same line) and adjust font, size and format. Don't forget the line breaks (paragraph breaks) to put fields in a new line.
6. Set "Columns" to "2". "Row height" can be left at "Automatic" or adjusted if you want more free space between entries. (You can also accomplish this by adding an empty paragraph after the last field.)
7. Click "New document" and you should get what you want. (The result is a normal TextMaker document with a table that can be adjusted via the usual page and table functions.)
8. Export as PDF, open in Adobe Reader and print as booklet.

The attached zip file contains a sample PlanMaker database and a TextMaker file made from this database.
If you need more information about booklet printing, you will find some hints here:
https://www.softmaker.com/en/blog/softm ... -textmaker

Good luck!
Jossi

[jfcorn]

Thank you so much for your help and explanation.
I have everything working pretty much as I had planned by tweaking here and there.
Have two questions;
1 - is there a means of having the column printed down the left side then down the right side, not a game stopper, just curious.
2 - when I generate a new document I have to then insert a footer to put in the page number, is there any way of putting this
in some sort of master document or must it be added each time?

Thank you again, I appreciate your support.
jfcorn

[Jossi]

Good questions!

Let me start with question 2: Instead of creating a new document, you may prepare an empty document as needed (including a footer with page number) and click "Insert" instead of "New document" in step 7. Then the existing document will be filled with the data.

As to question 1, I simply overlooked the fact that the resulting table is ordered row-by-row. Of course this is pretty useless for a telephone directory where you need a column-by-column order. I've found no way to change the order of the table, so you will have to use "Output as list" instead of "Output as table". As the two column table is now lacking, prepare a two column page layout (Format > Section..., tab "Columns") for your master document. Important: Change "Height" from "Auto" to "Page height"! To avoid those annoying column breaks inside an entry, select the whole document (Ctrl+A), then go to Format > Paragraph, tab "Text flow" and check "Keep together". Or, better still, select the paragraph style "Normal" (or whatever paragraph style you are using for your entries) in the side bar, click "Edit...", tab "Text flow" and check "Keep together".

[Jossi]

Good questions!

Let me start with question 2: Instead of creating a new document, you may prepare an empty document as needed (including a footer with page number) and click "Insert" instead of "New document" in step 7. Then the existing document will be filled with the data.

As to question 1, I simply overlooked the fact that the resulting table is ordered row-by-row. Of course this is pretty useless for a telephone directory where you need a column-by-column order. I've found no way to change the order of the table, so you will have to use "Output as list" instead of "Output as table". As the two column table is now lacking, prepare a two column page layout (Format > Section..., tab "Columns") for your master document. Important: Change "Height" from "Auto" to "Page height"! To avoid those annoying column breaks inside an entry, select the whole document (Ctrl+A), then go to Format > Paragraph, tab "Text flow", and check "Keep together". Or, better still, select the paragraph style "Normal" (or whatever paragraph style you are using for your entries) in the side bar, click "Edit...", tab "Text flow", and check "Keep together".