FMP 5 has a very neat "contacts" template I'd like to use for
generating mailing labels. But the default layout for the mailing
labels is last name, comma, first name instead of the more usual
firstname, lastname with no comma separating them. Is there any way to
suppress that comma?

Or does anyone have a mailing label template for FMP 5 that will do
what I want.

I don't want to create a new form myself because getting the spacing
right is so difficult.

In article
<d99200eb-d6a3-49c7-b149-f55a11ae7a16@p31g2000prf.googlegroups.com>,
Paul Brians <paulbrians@gmail.com> wrote:

> FMP 5 has a very neat "contacts" template I'd like to use for
> generating mailing labels. But the default layout for the mailing
> labels is last name, comma, first name instead of the more usual
> firstname, lastname with no comma separating them. Is there any way to
> suppress that comma?
> 
> Or does anyone have a mailing label template for FMP 5 that will do
> what I want.
> 
> I don't want to create a new form myself because getting the spacing
> right is so difficult.

You shouldn't need to create a new form, unless you want to keep the
original as well, but even then you can just Duplicate the existing
Layout and alter the copy.

It depends on how the comma has been put in, but it should be easy to
remove. There's no "Contacts" template in FileMaker 5.5 and the one in
FileMaker 4.1 doesn't a labels Layout like you describe, so there's a
bit of guesswork involved. 

First, MAKE A BACKUP of the FileMaker database just in case something
goes wrong.

Then you will need to go into Layout Mode and look at that labels
Layout to see how it has been done - there's really only about three
ways:

    - a Calculation field
      in this case you will have to go into the Define Fields
      window and alter the Calculation so that instead of
      something like:
              LastName & ", " & FirstName
      it says something like:
              FirstName & " " & LastName

    - Fields on the Layout with a comma in a separate text box
      You can simply click on the comma's text box and delete
      it, and then drag the two name Fields into the correct
      order (or double-click them and change them to the other
      Field).
 
    - Merge Fields and comma in a single text box
      Again, you cansimply delete the comma, but then you will
      have to retype the field names between the << and >>
      characters so they appear in the correct order, or you
      can delete one of the Field names and then use the menu
      command Insert -> Merge Field to put the missing one
      back into the correct place.



Helpful Harry                   
Hopefully helping harassed humans happily handle handiwork hardships  ;o)