evil date format

[Paul Clerc]

Howdy.

I am importing a string that looks like 20030122070000. I want the string to remain exactly as it appears here. FM seems to insist that it needs to be a date and consequently turns it into January 22, 2003 07:00:00 am. I have tried number and text data types and selected the box that says "leave data as entered" to no avail. Can anyone tell me how to get FM to leave this string in the string o' numbers format instead of the January.. format?

Many thanks,

Paul

[djgogi]

Try to make the field you are importing to of type TEXT

Dj

[PrincessJo]

Have you tried just putting the number into the field rather then importing it? Does it work then?

It works fine when I put it into a text field on my computer. So if when putting it in normally (rather then importing) it still does the same thing, it must be a preferences/settings thing, or if it works fine and stays as that number when you type it in, you know the problem is in the import, and possibly in the file you're importing from.

Either way, it narrows it down some.

Jo

[spb]

What are you importing from? If Excel, then I've found that defined date fields in Excel will transfer this characteristic to FM. If a straight number imported into a number field in FM, then as suggested, redefine your FM field to be text. You'd want to do that anyway, or you'll lose leading and trailing zeros. Try making a new FM field, defined as text, and import into that, see what happens.

I have no idea why it seems to be converting to a date. Somewhere along the line something is defined as a date field. Check your target FM field in Layout mode. Select Formatting & see if you have access to format date. If so, then FM thinks a date format is entering the field.

One workaround would be to make a calculation field that takes the info in the target field & forces it into text: DateToText (target). Then hide the target field away for importing only & display the calc field instead. This won't work if you need to modify the field, though.

Steve Brown

[Paul Clerc]

Thanks for the responses.

The field is text, both in the source and destination FM databases. I tried to format it as "exactly as entered" with the layout view - no dice.

I'm importing from MySQL to a FM db and them from that FM db to a second FM db. The field is a date in the MySQL database. I have not tried the DateToText function, I think that I will try that next.

Muchas gracias,

Paul

[Paul Clerc]

I did try entering it and it stays text if I enter it by hand. However, the format in the db that I'm importing from is correct. !

Thanks,

Paul