Looking For Alternate Methods Ideas

[Mendy]

Hi. I have a form with 140 buttons on it that launch pdf files (catalogs, owners manuals, parts books, etc). Initially I made the mistake of putting the pdf's in Alpha 5 V8\Reference. Upgraded to V9 and the directory is now Alpha 5 V9. Since all the buttons were tied to run another program (acrobat with path to Alpha 5 V8) I worked around this by creating folder that corresponded to the button path. One thought I had would be to reinstall V9 in an Alpha directory, put reference folder there and change button on push to reflect change. This way when updating Alpha the path would still be correct. Will be breaking this form into small forms such as Tools, Manuals, Regulations,Etc.

[crimmelcp]

Re: Looking For Alternate Methods Ideas

Use a variable path when the form opens

Dim Global vpath as C
vpath=("c:\xxxxxxxxxx\documents+chr(92)


and then open the document using the variables

You only have to change the code 1 time.

Charlie Crimmel

[G Gabriel]

Re: Looking For Alternate Methods Ideas

I have a form with 140 buttons

I think this is where you need to make changes.
I don't know if I could wade through 140 buttons!
Could there be one button with maybe a drop down list of files to open? or any variation thereof?
The list of files could be dynamically loaded whereby you do not need to change any physical addresses.

[Mendy]

Re: Looking For Alternate Methods Ideas

Thanks Charlie
Played with your method and was unable to make it work initially. After playing around with it I determined it was not working in run another program command line option(which is how I initally was launching the pdf's). Went to action scripting Miscellaneous, Open Non Alpha Five File. Chose Specify an expression that evaluates to the name of the file to open.

Declared Global Variable reference as c
reference="c:\alpha 5 v9\reference\\"

In expression entered reference+'54.pdf' Works great.
Use numbers on all my pdf's so it is easy to change button code. Have database which ties numbers to actual names.
Now tonight I can change all the buttons to reflect this change. Thanks again.

[DaveM]

Re: Looking For Alternate Methods Ideas

Use a variable path when the form opens

Dim Global vpath as C
vpath=("c:\xxxxxxxxxx\documents+chr(92)

and then open the document using the variables

You only have to change the code 1 time.

Charlie Crimmel

As above, but have the variable read from a field in a table sometwhere so there is no code, just change the path in the field if you need to.


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