Known difficulties when using dynamic printing and their solutions

Since version 3.7, many users have reported success with dynamic printing through Carbone.io, as it enables customizations that are still missing in the Ninox print editor. However, errors sometimes occur that make printing difficult or impossible. Here we explain the problem and a proven solution.

Carbone.io offers 2 methods to get the data needed for printing from Ninox:

1. In the simple method, only the field names from the Ninox table are used as reference in the template. For example, the text field Customer and the numeric field Price total can be listed in the Word file as {d.Customer} and {d.Price_total}. It is important to note that Ninox not only transfers the fields specified in the template, but all data in the Ninox data record, including linked data records. This is packed into a large JSON object and sent to Carbone.io. This can lead to the specified data size limit of 60 MB being exceeded, which is indicated by Ninox with an error message. Sometimes it can happen that the problem is not the size limit, but rather that Carbone.io cannot handle a part of the transferred information, which leads to the printing process being cancelled without an error message.
   
   If these problems occur, the following solution may help:
    
2. When calling up the dynamic layout in the print editor, you will find the Custom JSON option, which is switched off by default. If you activate it, a field for JSON data input appears. Here you can explicitly specify which data is to be transmitted to Carbone. To continue the example above, we would change the names in the template (e.g. {d.vCustomerName} instead of {d.CustomerName}) and then define the corresponding JSON object in the JSON data input field, for example:
   
   {
       vCustomer_name: Customer_name,
       vPrice_Total: 'Total price'
   }

This approach should avoid all the problems mentioned above.

Further examples, including the integration of sub-tables and image fields, will be published in the future under Learn & Share as sample databases. Solutions for other common problems with dynamic printing will also be shown there. We will integrate this knowledge and assistance as we update our documentation.