I am importing a file from Excel- and need the dates to come in from Excel as 00/00/0000 - which they are this way in Excel - however when i get them into FMP - it loses this format - I need to sort by dates in my solution and it is not sorting correctly when a date field looks like 9/2/07...

is there a calculation i can use to keep the formatting the same? thanks in advance

In the Manage Database dialog, make sure the field you are importing into is of the Date Type. The fields should sort correctly then (even if they are displaying differently on a layout...you can set how the fields display, which is different than how they are stored).

ok thanks very much - i guess i was too hung up on seeing the date format - looks like it really is sorting correctly... (i did have the data type set as date by the way.. )

thanks much

here's another question - same file -

We are tracking foster care youth. Placement agencies give us an excel file with the youth and all their placements - the youth are duplicated in the file- there could be up to 20 different placements or schools they have attended. How do I import these youth into specific fields I have defined? I am baffled at how to do this import... Can you help? or do you need more information? Thanks in advance.

Are the names exactly the same in the Excel file? If so, you'll a key lookup will probably work ok, meaning you create a relationship between the table you're importing into (Placements?) and the Clients table based on the name. The lookup should be defined in the field that holds the numeric key for the Client in the Placements table.