Zerosum

Yes, "Direction" is a calculation field that returns a text value: "up" or "down". It is calculated by referencing another field "Change" that is also a calculation field that returns a number calculated by comparing the closing prices of the current and previous trading sessions. Sorry, in future posts I will take greater care to be more precise . Thank you comment. Your suggestion worked brilliantly! I do appreciate all the advice. Great forum!

I don't understand why one cannot simply append text color commands to the original calculation field Case(Change > 0; "up";Change = 0;"unch"; Change < 0;"down") Something like: Case(Change > 0; "up";Change = 0;"unch"; Change < 0;"down"; Direction = "down"; TextColor("down";RGB(255;0;0); Direction = "up"; TextColor("up";RGB(0;0;255)) Probably the syntax is incorrect (and, in fact, the added info is ignored by FM) but surely there must be some common sense solution to a situation like this.

Thanks LaRetta for your reply. Your solution works fine - you even wrote the function for me. But now I have two fields yielding the same value: Direction in black and white, and Direction 2 in color. Hopefully, I can compose a function that combines the two steps Direction = Case(Change > 0; "up";Change = 0;"unch"; Change < 0;"down") and Case (Position ( Direction ; "Up" ; 1 ; 1 ) ; TextColor ( Direction ; RGB ( 0 ; 0 ; 255 ) ) ; Position ( Direction ; "Down" ; 1 ; 1 ) ; TextColor ( Direction ; RGB ( 255 ; 0 ; 0 ) ) ; Direction) into one so that the calculation is carried out and the resulting value colored thus eliminating the reference to the intermediate Direction field in your equation. I have ten or so of these fields I would like to color. Or should I make the referenced Diretion field invisible; probably by just physically reducing the field width to 0? (Actually this is quite interesting as it enables all sorts of complex Data manipulation.) Thanks again

Is it possible to vary the color of the text value of a calculation field according to what the calculation returns? I have constructed a database of commodity price movements. One field "Direction" returns "up" or "down". Is there some way to color "up" blue and "down" red? Of course if "up" and "down" had their own fields, I could easily do this in Layout, but that's not what I want. I also have various calculation fields returning the ANSI character ▲ or ▼. I would like to color code these as well. It might be possible to accomplish this using container fields. However I understand that it is not possible to perform searches, or further calculations using the contents of container fields, so that rules them out. Please note that I am new to FMP. I have managed to compose all the necessary calculation functions, but formatting problems are less intuitive. I notice a similar question from "The Dog", but I don't understand the answers. One suggestion involves "stacking" one field on another. How does one do that? This is not necessary in FMP 8? Another suggests setting up the calculation not as a calculation field but as a text field and choosing "auto-calc with replace." I am using FMP 8, but I can find no "with replace" option in the Define Database, text field set-up options window. Whenever I enter a calculation in a Text field Auto Enter/Calculated Value window, no values are generated in the desired field. What gives? Any advise will be appreciated. Thanks