Arranging Page Elements - Placement and Visibility

When a form design becomes complex, some page elements may obstruct others or may even not fit on the page in the design window. FTDesign adds page elements to the page in the order you create them. If, for example, you add a group header after creating a detail line, it can be difficult to correctly align text to the appropriate header text.

To cater for these situations, FTDesign allows you to define which page elements are currently visible on screen and in which order to place those elements. You can control this from the Placement and visibility option in the Define menu.

Note: this option has no influence on the order of page elements produced at run-time.

To adjust the Placement and visibility:

  • Select Placement and visibility from the Define menu.
  • On the Headers / footers tab:
    • Available - headers and footers in the Available box will not appear on the form in FTDesign. Although the headers and footers in the Available box do not appear on the form, they will still print at run-time.
    • Ordered - headers and footers in the Ordered box will appear on the form in the same sequence.
    • Right/Left arrows - use the right and left arrows to move headers and footers between the Available and Ordered boxes.
    • Up/Down arrows - use the up and down arrows to change the header and footer order in the Ordered box.
  • On the Detail lines tab:
    • Available - detail lines in the Available box will not appear on the form in FTDesign. Although the details lines in the Available box do not appear on the form, they will still print at run-time.
    • Ordered - detail lines in the Ordered box will appear on the form in the same sequence.
    • Right/Left arrows - use the right and left arrows to move detail lines between the Available and Ordered boxes.
    • Up/Down arrows - use the up and down arrows to change the detail line order in the Ordered box.
  • On the Sub-forms tab:
    • Sub-forms - in the sub-forms box check or uncheck the check box to make the sub-form visible or not visible.
    • Show All - click the Show All button to make all sub-forms on the form visible.
    • Hide All - click the Hide All button to make all sub-forms on the form not visible.

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