I have version 7. I've imported a list of names from an Excel table. The fields all get imported fine, first name, last name, address, etc. Each record contains a date field in the form of 03052005, 09102005, 07022005, etc. I've defined this field in Filemaker as a date field, but even after I do that, these entries do not change to the "9/25/2005" which is the form my creation and modification date are in. And I cannot seem to be able to sort the records by the date field. Any idea what I'm doing wrong?

[email protected]

If your imported date field is defined as either a number or text field, it should sort in the proper order. The internal number format for a date in FileMaker is the number of days starting on 1/1/0001. Your imported format will not convert to a correct date when imported to a date field. If you import to a text field, the following calculation will give you a date.

Date (calculation, date) = Date( Left(YourField, 2), Middle(YourField, 3,2), Middle(YourField, 5, 4))

-bd