360Works Scribe

The ultimate text processor

Scribe is the ultimate text processing plug-in. Use it to read and write text from Microsoft Office and PDF files, find what changed in a text field, and highlight text matching any criteria.

360Works Scribe can read and write from Excel, Word, and PDF files

• Scribe can read and write Excel documents. Scribe can read and write any cell in Excel (Excel 2007 or later). For example, let's say that a vendor or client of yours uses Excel order forms that you need to enter into your FileMaker database. With Scribe, you can create a FileMaker script that will read all of the order form fields and insert them into FileMaker fields with no manual data entry! Because Scribe can also write to Excel, you could do the same thing in reverse too: Use data in your FileMaker solution to automatically fill out an Excel order form.
  
• Scribe can read and write Word documents. Scribe can find and replace text in Microsoft Word documents (Word 2007 or later). You can use this to create customized documents from templates in Word. It can also retrieve field names, and read and write form fields in Word created with the Content Controls feature of Word.
  
• Scribe can read and write PDF forms. If you have a PDF form that users download from your web site and then send back to you, you can use Scribe to automatically read their form inputs and insert them into fields in FileMaker records. Since Scribe can also write to PDF fields, you could use this to automate a workflow that requires you to fill out PDF forms and send them to somebody else.
  

360Works Scribe can extract searchable text from just about any kind of document

• Let's say that you're storing documents in FileMaker. You can store the documents in a container (or SuperContainer), but how will your user be able to search for the documents? The answer is Scribe. It will extract all of the human-readable text from any Word, Excel, PDF, HTML, RTF file, or even JPEG metadata. This text can then be stored in a searchable, indexed field in FileMaker so that your users can search for any document based on its contents!

Extracting text from a PDF document

360Works Scribe can do powerful processing on text fields in your FileMaker database

• 360Works Scribe can visually show you what text was changed. Let's say that you're storing proposals or contract text in FileMaker. FileMaker can tell you when it was last changed, and who changed it, but it can't tell you exactly what the changes were. For that, you need Scribe!




• 360Works Scribe can highlight text within a text field. With Scribe, you can do Google Cache-style text highlighting. This could be based on a user's search term, or any other criteria. This function is not case-senstive, which means it will highlight words even if the capitalization does not exactly match. For advanced users, you can use regular-expression type matching to highlight any text pattern, not just matching words. For example, you could [highlight all text in square brackets], or all valid email address, or all hyperlinks, or anything else.

  This example shows how you can use Scribe to highlight any text in [square brackets] as a workflow and collaboration tool:
  

• 360Works Scribe can find text patterns. If you're familiar with regular expressions, you can use Scribe to find every occurrence of a text pattern, and return it as a FileMaker value list. You could use this feature to scan text fields for postal codes, email addresses, web sites, order numbers, or any other type of text value. You can also combine this with text replacement to modify the original text. Use this feature to strip out HTML code or blank out credit card / social security numbers.

  Using this feature, Scribe can extract all valid email addresses from a text field:
  

360Works Scribe consolidates features from our other plugins

If you've been using 360Works Textractor, 360Works Difference Engine, or 360Works Patterns, those functions are all now included in 360Works Scribe. Scribe combines all of these features, plus adds the ability to read and write PDF, Microsoft Excel, and Microsoft Word documents. If you've purchased these plugins, you are eligible for upgrade pricing on Scribe.

There is a support forum dedicated to 360Works at FmForums.com - that is the place to go to post any questions, tips, or suggestions for 360Works Scribe.

What does the FileMaker community think of 360Works Scribe?

This 6:33 video from Richard Carlton Consulting shows how to use Scribe to do a mail merge from FileMaker data to Microsoft Word.

Hear what Lee Strong and Andy Cohen have to say about 360Works Scribe on episode 123 of FileMaker Success tips.

"Inspector would not be all that it is without the help of the Scribe Plug-in from 360 Works"—Vincenzo Menanno - Director of FileMaker Development, Beezwax

"Scribe has been working very well. I was telling Richard the other day that the plugin is worth its price just for the substitute function that you added"—Garrett Debski, Richard Carlton Consulting

"I have put Scribe in place and it is working flawlessly so far... We have under way a test of a pdf form that has 393 fields, some are extracted and the rest are inserted into the form. So far, I cannot report any problems at all... 360 Works and you have done a marvelous job!" —Charles Huff, Briggs & Associates

"I've just seen the Scribe plugin. I'm too dumbstruck for more than two words: WOW! and Thanks! "—Marc Thewes, Thewes & Reuter

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Questions and Answers

Will it run on Windows/Mac? What version of FileMaker is required?

Yes, all of our plugins are designed to run on Mac OS X (PowerPC and Intel) as well as on Windows.

Our plugins take advantage of the plugin features of FileMaker 7 and later, such as attaching styles to text, and are compatible with the most recent version, FileMaker 12. In addition, the Mac versions of all of our plugins ship as universal binaries, and will run at full speed on both PowerPC and Intel Macs.

	Mac OS X 10.4 or later on PPC	Mac OS X 10.4 or later on Intel	Windows XP or later
FileMaker 4-6	FileMaker Pro 7 or later required
FileMaker Pro 7	X	Won't run in Rosetta	X
FileMaker Pro 8	X	Won't run in Rosetta	X
FileMaker Pro 8.5	X	X	X
FileMaker Pro 9	X	X	X
FileMaker Pro 10	X	X	X
FileMaker Pro 11	X	X	X
FileMaker Pro 12	X	X	X
FileMaker Server 7 Advanced	X	X	X
FileMaker Server 8.0v4 Advanced	See note below	See note below	X
FileMaker Server 9 Advanced	X	X	X
FileMaker Server 9	X	X	X
FileMaker Server 10	X	X	X
FileMaker Server 10 Advanced	X	X	X
FileMaker Server 11	X	X	X
FileMaker Server 11 Advanced	X	X	X
FileMaker Server 12	X	X	X
FileMaker Server 12 Advanced	X	X	X

FileMaker Server Advanced 8.0v4: Unfortunately, a bug in FileMaker Server Advanced 8.0v4 disables all plugins in the Web Publishing Engine on OS X. This affects all plugins, not just ones from 360Works. FileMaker, Inc. is aware of this bug.

Rosetta: Rosetta is not supported. If you are running FileMaker 7 or 8 on an Intel Macintosh, we strongly recommend upgrading to FileMaker 8.5 or later; the speed and stability improvements are very significant.

What about Web Publishing and FileMaker Server?

If you purchase the Enterprise License (see below), then you will be able to use the plugin with the FileMaker Web Publishing Engine. This means that when you use our plugins in your FileMaker scripts, they will work the same way with Instant Web Publishing (IWP). It also means that your Custom Web Publishing applications (with XSLT, PHP, or any other web technology) can call FileMaker scripts that use our plugins.

If you're using FileMaker Server 9 or later, our plugins are compatible with the FileMaker Server scheduled script feature.

Can I use this plugin with my FileMaker runtime solution?

Yes, all of our plugins work in FileMaker runtimes solutions, just copy the plugin to the runtime's Extensions folder.

What kind of licenses are there?

Most of our plugins are available in 3 licenses: a Demo version which works for 2 hours every time you launch FileMaker, a "WorkGroup License" for 10 or fewer users, and an "Enterprise License" for unlimited users within a single organization.

There are more Questions and Answers on our product support site.

Purchase the Portfolio Bundle to obtain an Enterprise license of this product which allows for unlimited users within a single organization.