I need to create a summary field for work oustanding containing the total of a certain field, however, some of the values in this field have a negative value due to the way my client works...

example

record 1 work oustanding on project x = -10

record 2 work oustanding on project y = 45

At present the calculation = 39 when in actual fact the work oustanding is still 45

What i need to achieve is a calculation which ignores the negative values or at the very least treats them as ZERO so that negative values do not impact on the work still oustanding in the summary field.

Version: v6.x

Platform: Windows XP

Hello cabalamedia,

Summary fields don't provide a lot of controls and options, so if you want to alter their behavior you need to be a bit 'lateral' in approach.

What I suggest that you do is to define a calculation field with the formula:

Max(0, YourField)

- and then re-define the summary field for work outstanding, to provide the total of the calc field. The calc field need not appear on any layouts - it can operate entirely behind the scenes, but it will have the effect of 'filtering out' any negative values from the data being totaled by your summary field.

excellent, solved the problem easily, these things are so obvious when pointed out..but a nightmare when you are racking your brains!!....thanks very much