Defining or changing a button bar

Creating and managing layouts and reports > Working with buttons and button bars on layouts > Defining or changing a button bar

You can define a button bar to display multiple buttons and popover buttons horizontally or vertically. For each button or popover button, you can add a text label, an icon, or text and an icon. For buttons, you can assign a single command or a script to perform.

To define or change a button bar:

1. If any button or popover button in the button bar will perform a script (as opposed to a single FileMaker Pro command), you can create the script first.

See Creating and editing scripts.

2. In Layout mode, from the Layout pop-up menu, choose the layout for the button bar. Then:

•To define a new button bar, in the status toolbar, click the Button Bar tool

, then drag the crosshair to draw the button bar. FileMaker Pro creates a button bar with three segments on the layout and displays the Button Bar Setup dialog box. (You define the segments as buttons or popover buttons.)

•To change a button bar definition, double-click the button bar on the layout. FileMaker Pro displays the Button Bar Setup dialog box.

3. Choose the orientation of the button bar: click

4. Choose how you want the labels to appear on all buttons in the button bar.

By default, FileMaker Pro creates a label of text only, center aligned.

5. For Active Segment, choose the segment that will by default be the Active display state in Browse and Find modes.

To have no active segment, choose None. To create a calculation for the active segment, choose Specify and enter a formula that returns the object name of the segment. See Naming objects and Working with formulas and functions.

6. Click

to move to the segment you want to design, then create a label.

For labels with	Do this
Text only	Type the label in the text box. To specify a calculation for the text, click and define the calculation. See Specify Calculation dialog box.
An icon only	Click , then click an icon from the choices that appear. To change the size of the icon, drag the slider (the icon's size changes on the layout), or enter a size (in points). To use a custom icon, click +, choose a filename (in PNG or SVG format), then click Open (Windows) or Insert (macOS). For more information about SVG support, see FileMaker Pro SVG Grammar for Button Icons. To remove a custom icon from the list of choices in this file, select the icon, then click —. The icon is removed from the list, but buttons or popover buttons that use the removed icon don't change.
Text and an icon	Type the label in the text box, and click an icon from the choices that appear. Use the information above to complete the label.

To add a segment to the button bar, click +; to remove a segment, select the segment and click —.

7. Choose a button type for the segment: Button or Popover Button.

8. If you chose:

•Button, choose an action and change the cursor appearance (see steps 5 and 6 of Defining or changing a button). Then continue to step 9, below.

•Popover Button, choose the direction in which the popover opens and assign script triggers to the popover (see Changing popover settings). Then continue to step 9, below.

9. Repeat steps 6–8 to define each segment.

To rearrange segments in a button bar:

1. In Layout mode, select the button bar.

2. Click and hold the segment for a moment, then drag the segment to its new position.

To move a button bar:

•In Layout mode, select the button bar, then drag the button bar to its new location.

Notes

•For additional notes specific to buttons, see Defining or changing a button.