I have a field called "title". i have a different field called "volNumber". i have to combine the fields so title and the volume number are together.

so, i created a field called title_volume. i defined the field as calculation and text. here is the calculation.

Case(

IsEmpty(title) and IsEmpty(volNumber),

IsEmpty(title), Trim(volNumber),

Trim(title) & " " & Trim(volNumber)

)

when i finished the calcualtion and inserted the field, it combined titles and volume numbers for me. good. however, titles w/out a volume number did not show up. i need them to show up. is there something i can add or modify to this calcualtion that will place titles w/out volume numbers in the new field "title_volume"?

IsEmpty(title) and IsEmpty(volNumber),

Change this line to:

IsEmpty(title) and IsEmpty(volNumber), "" ,

Jerry

Try Case( not IsEmpty(title), Trim(title) & " " ) & Trim(volNumber)

works like a charm. thank you both. (now if i can only get that darn date conversion to work.)

Re: conversion--It shouldn't be that difficult. Try attaching a copy of the file that doesn't seem to work. It will be much easier to determine your problem that way.

got the date conversion to work. thank you Queue. but i have run into a problem w/ the title and volume calculation above.

some of the titles are in another language. there is a second title field called "transTitle". this field was the phonetic spelling of the original title from 3 different languages.

i there something i can add on, like a conditional statement or something so that if the title field is empty, filemaker will search the "transTitle" field and link it w/ the volNumber field?

again, if it detects the "title" field as being empty, it would take the data from the "transTitle" field.

Is there a chance that both title fields could have data? If not, then

Case( not IsEmpty(Trim(title & transTitle)), Trim(title & transTitle) & " " ) & Trim(volNumber)

should work. Otherwise,

Case( not IsEmpty(Trim(title)), Trim(title) & " ", not IsEmpty(Trim(transTitle)), Trim(transTitle) & " " ) & Trim(volNumber)

will work.

"Is there a chance that both title fields could have data?"

yes. very large chance. should i use the second calculation?

Case( not IsEmpty(Trim(title)), Trim(title) & " ", not IsEmpty(Trim(transTitle)), Trim(transTitle) & " " ) & Trim(volNumber)

If you want title to be used instead of transTitle, unless title is empty, then yes.