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Changing the background fill and borders of a layout part

You can change the fill or border of individual layout parts. You can also set up different colors for alternating rows of a body part.

Tip  You can copy style attributes between parts. See Copying style attributes between objects or layout parts.

To change the fill or borders of a layout part:

1.	In Layout mode, click the Selection tool , then click the part label with the arrow pointer.

2.	Click Inspector in the layout bar, then click Appearance.

3.	In the Graphic area, for Fill, specify a color, a color gradient, or an image. You can apply a fill to a part similarly to how you apply a fill to an object. See Filling an object or a layout part with a color gradient, or Filling an object or a layout part with an image.

Note  The fill you specify for the body part also affects the background of the table in Table View.

4.	To add a border to the part, in the Inspector, for Line choose a style, width and color for the border, then select All borders, or choose any combination of borders.

5.	Save the changes to the layout.

You can set up an alternating background fill color for body parts to create a visual contrast when viewing lists of records. Even-numbered records use the alternating background fill specified for the body part. For example, to simulate the appearance of green bar paper (a once-common paper type used with dot-matrix printers), you can set up a layout part to display every other record with a light green background.

To set up an alternating background fill color for a body part:

1.	In Layout mode, choose Layouts menu > Part Setup.

2.	In the Part Setup dialog box, select the part, then click Change.

You can also double-click the part label on the layout.

3.	In the Part Definition dialog box, select Alternate background fill and choose a color from the color palette.

4.	Click OK, then click Done.

Notes

•	You can’t set a corner radius on a part border.

•	For information on defining the appearance of layout objects such as fields, see Setting the fill, line style, and borders on objects.

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When you fill a layout part with an image, the image is stored in the FileMaker Pro file. The image then appears in every record that uses the layout and “fills” the entire width of the FileMaker Pro window when it is resized. You can also insert an image as a static object on a layout, which lets you reference the image from another file. For more information, see Inserting graphics onto a layout.

•	You can also insert graphics as data into container fields. Do this when you have a different graphic for each record, such as employee photos in an employee directory database table. For more information, see Inserting graphics into fields.