I am very new to filemaker.A complete beginner.I have a table that has a field named date and a field named #of nights. This is associated with room bookings. I need to create a calculation that will generate the actual dates associated with the number of nights.

Example:

Start Date: 01/01/08

Number of nights: 5

I want to generate the dates as follows in separate rows:

Calc Dates:

01/01/08

01/02/08

01/03/08

01/04/08

01/05/08

How can I do this or what formula can I use to look up the start date and multiply the nights?

do you want a list of these dates, or do you want separate fields?

There are several ways to do this - so it would be helpful to know why you need it, and how you're going to use it. If by "separate rows" you mean separate RECORDS, you will need a script - a calculation cannot create records.

I need to obtain the total amount of rooms booked by date. All I have are the start date and number of nights and those are associated with individual people. I think I need to have them presented as separate records. Im not sure syntax wise how I write this script to do the date breakout.

I think I want them as a list of dates associated with the index id they came from. How do I go about doing that?

As Michael pointed out already, you will need a script to generate the related records. You can write a loop to generate the records.

I need to obtain the total amount of rooms booked by date.

I am afraid that doesn't say much about HOW you intend to obtain and present such amount. If it's by a relationship, then you don't need to do anything. If it's by a report, sub-summarized by date - then you will indeed need to break up the single booking into separate records, one for each day.

Can you direct me someplace online or if you have a good example of a loop statment using the filemaker scripting language? I am having trouble with the syntax and if I could just see a good example that may help me.

Here is a file that was quickly whipped up to help you get started.

RoomBooking.zip