Cumulative info in a field

[Maxwell Morlay]

I need to enter cumulative information into a field by way of a script. I want to enter today's date, then, next month, I want to enter that day's date, thus keeping cumulative dates of activity. I have a script written that will do that, but it WRITES OVER the earlier date, thus erasing it.

Here's my process: I click on a script that takes me to a thankyou letter. It prints it, then takes me back to my "Data-Entry" layout which contains a "Date_ThankYou_Sent" field. Today's date is entered automatically. Weeks, months or years later, I want to perform the same script for the same record, i.e., send a second or third thankyou letter to the same person. When the script comes back to the "Date_ThankYou_Sent" field, I want it to ADD today's date to dates entered in the past. I want a record of all thankyou letters sent.

Thanks so much! Maxwell Morlay

[Vaughan]

One small problem: a date field can only contain one date. You'd probably be best to have one "real" date field that holds the "last printed" date, and another text field that lists all the dates (except that won't really be dates they'll just be text).

To get the accumulating list of "dates", create a text field (I'll call it DateList). The single script step that accumulates them is:

Set Field [DateList, DateList & "P" & DateToText(Date)]

This will create a list of paragraph delimited dates with newest date last. To separate the dates by commas and spaces, substitute the ", " for the "P" in the calculation above. Of course the "P" is a paragraph mark, not a capital p.

If you want the newest date first, change the calculation to

DateToText(Date) & "P" & DateList

[Maxwell Morlay]

Vaughan: Thanks so much. Finally I have an answer to this situation. Now I can make it work. Maxwell Morlay in Texas

[Vaughan]

Hey Maxwell, nice pic. Can you do one of me?

[Maxwell Morlay]

Actually, one of my students created that cartoon of me more than 20 years ago. Sorry, that's not one of my talents.

Maxwell Morlay