Find birthdays

[DanBrill]

Is there any way the end user can find all of the birthdays for a month? Something like, 'find all of the people with March birthdays.' By 'end user', I mean can this be done without acalc fields that parses out a birthdate's month and then finds on that calc field? Is it just possible to search a date field for somehthing like 03/**/****, or do I have to break down and do this the old fashioned way?

Dan

[underhat]

Hi Dan,

The syntax you want to use is 03/01/2003...03/31/2003

That is, MM/DD/YYYY (or, perhaps DD/MM/YYYY if you're using a European date format?). List the start and end dates, separated with three periods.

[DanBrill]

Hi Underhat,

Thanks for your response. Your search would result in all of the March 2003 birthdays. I want to find all the March birthdays of any year. I was hoping to find a way to do it right from the Date Of Birth (DOB) field to avoid cluttering up an already-crowded layout.

But I can't seem to find a way, so I just created a calc_BirthMonth=MonthName(DOB). The user can enter the birth month (selected from a drop-down custom value list of the names of the months) and search on that. This will find all of the March babies from infants to centenarians. Works fine, just isn't quite as elegant as I'd hoped.

Thanks,

Dan

[LaRetta]

Dan said...Works fine, just isn't quite as elegant as I'd hoped.

Hi Dan, Maybe it's not quite as elegant to you but it's soooo much easier for your Users than trying to remember to type something like 03/**/**** (or any other combination of strange symbols that they don't understand) and it will produce consistent results. Every time you open things up for inconsistent data-entry, finds, etc, you also increase the possibility of errors or finding incorrect data. Most Users don't remember these keystrokes and, if a User has to stop working to figure out the correct symbol combinations or worse, enters the wrong information (and thus finds an incorrect set on which to perform their work) - like mass mailing to the wrong set - then the method is no longer elegant.

To save layout space, you can place that calc (with Allow Entry off) under your standard birthday field (with background on birthday field opaque). Users won't know it's there unless you pop it with your find script. It will look like they're searching the BirthDate field. Something like:

Go to Field [ BirthdayCalc ]

Enter Find Mode []

Pause/Resume Script [ "0:00:01" ]

Perform Find [ Replace Found Set ]

All you need is a button next to it or activate it from Script Menu dropdown or script shorcut key. And your Value List could be from field values based upon this calculation (MonthName(Birthdate) if you had Index ON for the calc. In this way, you wouldn't need to script for No Records Found because the VL wouldn't display a month if no one had a birthdate in that month. Of course using values from field would produce the list is strict alpha order. Some Users like it alpha, some like it in calendar sequence as I'm sure you've added it in Custom. I think your decision was perfect.

LaRetta

[DanBrill]

Thanks. You're making me feel better already.