I would tend not to keep history in PDF . Depending on the company, the number of statement pdf
files could easily grow into the thousands. It is difficult to maintain thousands of external files and there is always the issue of security with these files as well. I would suggest that you create a StatementHistory table with Customer#, Statement# and then the statement data columns required to recreate a statement. This table normally does not need to be overly complex. It simply records the statement. Then you can reprint any statement at any time and send it to PDF , email, printer, etc. etc. It does not require any external files or other external programs to maintain the pdf's etc. Security remains inside Rbase tables as well. The "thousands of records" will almost certainly take less disk space than thousands of PDF files and is much easier to control and use. A form can then be designed to have a very robust list of options for selecting statements to re-print such as check boxes, statement range, last statement, etc. with the delivery options as well. (Printer, pdf , direct email) Combining multiple statements to single PDFS on the fly is as simple as printing. You could even add a comment field so that comments could be entered as history evolved on the statement account. Such as "Resent statement on 3/18/10 per request of John Smith" etc. I use this method in the initial creation of all statements. Have an end of month job run and create all statements. Then the statements can be printed from this table along with a print and send status. You have a lot of print options. You can change order by or select by for different groupings. Such as some customers get emailed direct, others get hard copy and others both. As always, many ways to accomplish an end task. -Bob ----- Original Message ----- From: KarenTellef @cs.com To: "RBASE-L Mailing List" < rbase -l@ rbase .com> Sent: Monday, March 22, 2010 9:17:19 AM GMT -06:00 US/Canada Central Subject: [RBASE-L] - Printing a bunch of PDF files In my neverending attempt to get a client to upgrade to 7.6, I'm throwing all kinds of "but if you did you could do this..." at them. I had another idea but want to see how it could be done. I'm thinking of changing their monthy statement program so that rather than printing right away it prints to PDF files, and then they can print out in chunks whenever they want plus obviously have history documents. If I print to one big PDF file, then they can bring up the file and print a page range. But I'm worried the file might be huge and they would have trouble searching for a client. If instead they want individual PDF files, how would they be able to print say 50 of them at once? I can see several ways of doing it: 1. They could bring up Adobe, easily highlight and open 50 documents. Is there a menu option to say "print all documents"? I can't find it. 2. I could write a program in RBase to bring up a menu of PDF files to choose from. Then what? Write a batch file that launches Adobe with the print parameters, ie 50 different command lines? 3. I could define an RBase report with some kind of control to display the PDF file? This might be a problem if the address is meant to fit in a window envelope and the report would change the size of the PDF file displayed. Any other ideas? Karen
