Fields locked on converted form

Opening a Pan6 file in PanX, the form will not open fields for editing.
Details: OS 10.15.3
Panorama 10.1.2 (2854)
File (author mode) has one Form and DataSheet

Fields can be edited in DataSheet but don’t update on the form.
All the form graphics and fields are on a Data Tile.
Removing the data tile seems to put things right.

I’ll look for info on Printing a report and if data tiles are no longer a thing - there was no warning about that when opening the Pan6 or saving it as .pandb.

The imported file has equations in Design Sheet that make use fo the Omega symbol from yesteryear.

Original flle had colored buttons but on in PanX button color is gone. After I clicked a few options to look at the form property, the PanoramaX menu item to Quit was disabled and i had to Force Quit. That could be a red herring.

Where is the best place to start reading about report formatting; i.e. doing things you used to do with Tiles if tiles are no longer supported?

The form printed perfectly without the data tile but that could be a coincidence in having the fields laid out on the form so they matched the 8.5 x 11 sheet.

Turns out, in Pan6, the user had the Data Tile in front of the fields. In PanX, Selecting the tile and sending Back allowed editing the fields.

I found the PanX Form documentation - but didn’t see any mention of this Pan6 vs PanX difference with Tile action; i.e. must be behind the fields.

Couple of Observations: the 600K Pan6 file increased to 1.6MB in PanX.
Two fields that were on the form, but not on the data tile, in Pan6, did not show up on the form in PanX

I just encountered that issue yesterday and was about to resume my efforts to track down and fix the problem. Thanks for finding and sharing the solution. It worked and saved me a lot of time and effort.

Yeah, the old, “Back object covers the front object” routine. :grinning: Question is, is it a bug? If any object X covers an object Y and hence masks Y, isn’t that consistent? But is a Data Tile really an object - like a rectangle or any other graphic on a form. Isn’t it more of a “visual instruction” to Panorama about printing desires. Hummmm.

One other thing I noticed was in Pan6 there were two fields on the form but off the data tile. After bringing the file into PanX, those two “not on the data tile” fields were removed from the form. I didn’t come full circle and remove the data tile in Pan6, open it in PanX again, and see if those two fields were now there. Maybe I’ll do that later just to confirm.

I’d say yes. Tiles always go to the background when created and would be expected to be the same in a converted form. Since the cells were selectable in Graphics Mode I never thought about the tile ‘covering’ them but I was trying to figure out the layering issue. If I dragged an unusable cell off the form it worked. I never even pondered that the Tile could be covering them.

Whether or not it’s a bug worth pursuing, I don’t know how many conversions remain to be done or how often this has been an issue.

This is definitely a bug.

However, it has nothing to do with converting from Panorama 6. You can simply create a new form, create text editor objects and then a data tile and this will happen. Surprisingly, putting a translucent rectangle on top of the text editors doesn’t cause a problem, but putting a putting a data tile on top definitely causes a problem. I’ve logged it in BitBucket.

I can see why you would think that, because they always display behind other objects, but internally they layer like any other object.

What’s really odd about this bug is that push buttons aren’t affected the same way. A push button still works fine when sent to back behind a data tile. This is going to be a weird one, I think.

For now, if you’re using Text Editors and data tiles in the same form, make sure you send the data tiles to the back.