[sims] Photo Reports

[DeeGee]

Hi,

 

I have been asked to produce a report with staff photos, staff code, name and department.

 

I have done this, but have hit a snag which means it's in a format which is totally unsuitable for SMT.

 

Over the years our staff photos have been imported into SIMS in a variety of different sizes, therefore if I run a standard Word list report, I get one photo per page for some staff, for other staff only a passport sized photo.

 

I have tried to create the report in one of the ready-made templates - the address labels one. I have managed to get it into a format which will pass, but when printing the report insists on printing to the multi-purpose tray. Unfortunately, if pressing print will not cause the report to print, it'll be rejected- I can't expect them to load the tray with paper and then press print.

 

I have attempted a mailmerge report, but that can't handle the photo, and an RTF report is giving an out of memory error which I assume comes from the size of some of the photos.

 

This is leaving me having to produce the report manually, copying and pasting staff photos into a document. I'll also have to keep this up-to date with staff changes. We're the third largest secondary school in the country and hold training school status - I can't allow myself to have this job.

 

Has anyone got a report template I could use or some advice they could give me? Helping me make the labels report print to the paper drawer would be fine, but I can't see a setting anywhere.

 

Anyone?

 

Thanks,

[Steven_Cleaver]

Hi

 

What about printing to PDF I have found this really useful in printing some funny formats out of SIM's.

 

FREE PDF Printer

 

Could try above or various other free Prnt to PDF Software.

[DeeGee]

Thanks Steven. That's worth a thought, but then it's probably more actions required than opening the tray and putting paper in. Or it still requires me to recognise every time a new member of staff has been appointed and run the report again.

 

It's a workaround, but it isn't ideal.

[glennda]

Personally I would export as a word doc - then in word save as HTML this then saves all the photos in the sub-folder. I would the bulk resize and import back into sims at a smaller size so the sims report looks normal when created.

[matt40k]

You can set the size of the photo in the report template... Or use SalamanderSoft photo Extractor tool - SalamanderSoft Limited - Free Utilities

 

If you get resource issues - and you can't throw SSD\RAM\Network\blah blah at it, filter it, so A-P Q-Z or whatever.

[vikpaw]

I have a really nice RTF template you can use, but you'll need to fix the photo size first. Either the Salamander Tool or manually using a filtered report would do the trick.

 

I don't think resizing the photo in the template will work because it will still download the full sized photo. I use a table to force the size of the photo and it's usually fine. We use a similar template for teachers to get class photos. It might take a minute or so to run, but they work really well.

 

When we take new staff photos, and add them to SIMS, i also dump the information to the intranet and it's stored there for quick retrieval, but it is a manual process, which needs periodic updating.