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This is not as uncommon as you may think. What happens is that security protection is considered as an afterthought by the developer and/or project manager. So a developer starts to put in their security settings sometime before going LIVE with their FileMaker solution or shortly there after. They start to get reports from users that say that this button no longer works. Many times, the developer assumes the user must be doing something wrong. That script worked fine and hasn’t been touched it in ages.
What has happened, is that you didn’t test the script when signed in at a particular security level. One of the settings in the security level is breaking your script. I do not know of any script or security debugger that will catch this for you. I wish I could lay out all the possibilities for you but I cannot. I will give you the two biggest ones that I’ve come across.
Ability To Edit A Record Turned Off
This will break scripts with the steps of Paste, Insert, Set and Replace for all field types except for global fields. Generally, you will get no blinking lights or warning sirens when the script is running. For script steps that use Paste or Replace, FileMaker will simply pass over the steps it cannot perform and you will be none the wiser. If you are pasting / inserting a calculated result or using the SET script step, FileMaker will generally give you an error dialog box of “Your password does not enable you to do this, or this file is not modifiable.” Of course, if your script has Set Error Capture On, you will not even get this dialog box. In fact, you may end up capturing the wrong error code.
Ability To Export Records Turned Off
This will break script steps that import from one file or table to the next. If you do not have the ability to export records, another FileMaker file will not be able to import that data into it. This will also break the script step of Copy All Records. This can be very troublesome if you are copy a set of records to use in a report or email message.
Most of the above content was written when FileMaker 6 was the latest release. Although the situations are still relevant, those of us using a newer version of FileMaker have an advantage in the above situations. This is a small checkbox in the script to run with full access privileges. So if you click this check box, the script will run as if the user had no data or layout related restrictions and then go back to the users actual security settings when the script is completed.
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© 2008 – Dwayne Wright – dwaynewright.com
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