Hi FM forum,

Looking for some advice on formatting a dropdown calendar. I've enclosed a screen shot of the page, and what I'd like is to have the dropdown list just be the month/year names. It then would show up in the global date field, formatted to just show the month/year. Is this possible? It works if I put the mon/day/year format in the list, but how about just the names?

Thanks in advance, John

For all those who viewed this post, here is an update and solution to the problem. What I had wanted to do is apparently not possible, as none of the gurus that inhabit the forum responded. So the safe assumption is that the question was too far off base, and there should be other, easier, solutions.

And that actually was the case, Søren Dyhr made the astute suggestion that I really just needed 'previous' and 'next' buttons to change the date field to the adjacent months. He suggested using a Set Field caculation that works perfectly, at least in my particular file.

Next:

SetField (gBaseDate)

Calc: Placeholder::gBaseDate - Day ( Placeholder::gBaseDate )+34

Previous:

SetField (gBaseDate)

Calc: Placeholder::gBaseDate - Day ( Placeholder::gBaseDate )-4

John

Edited August 3, 200817 yr by Guest

Well this could be solved another way as well, what if the user only are in a few month during the year, then is it utterly boring to tabbing my buttons, then chould a oldfashion dropdown without the calendaring feature be utilized.

The logging in lands the user in the present month, but if the user then place the cursor in the Data dropdown field. Could you define a calc'field in the values table:

Date ( Month ( fk_theDate ) ; 1 ; Year ( fk_theDate ) )

This field is then approached the way the image above displays! The issue here is each registration of time have the date as one of the foreign keys - but the uniformation via the calc' makes each month show up with just one time for each ... eventhough sometimes 22 different dates might have registrations.

But when thinking a bit further can you actually have a bit of both, buttons that only jumps to possible sheets.

Since we now have defined a dynamic value list can we similar find the location of the present value in via this non-recursive CF:

http://www.briandunning.com/cf/62

and let it via GetValue( plucking in the result of ValueListItems( ...before and after.

--sd

Edited August 3, 200817 yr by Guest

What I had wanted to do is apparently not possible, as none of the gurus that inhabit the forum responded.

I wouldn't jump to conclusions. Most of the time, when you do not receive a response, it's because the question is not clear enough. Other times people may be busy, or it's the weekend. Or they might think the answer too complex to explain.

I wouldn't jump to conclusions.

Comment, you're exactly right. I wasn't being critical, I've received some absolutely fantastic help here in this forum and I'm very grateful. I just figured my idea was too far out on a limb to warrant much of a response.

Well this could be solved another way as well

Søren, thanks again for an interesting idea. I'll try to work my way through it.

John

I wasn't being critical

I didn't think you were. I only thought your conclusion was unwarranted.

In order to answer your initial question:

what I'd like is to have the dropdown list just be the month/year names

See how it's done here:

http://www.filemakerpros.com/CALBASIC.sit

Position("**JanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec"; Left(xMonth; 3); 1; 1) / 3

So what he does is to split the entry in two dropdowns, since it's more straight forward to maintain two lists, and if you suddenly needs to add a year, shouldn't you rebuild the list by copy and pasting 12 month and substitute the years...



The biggest problem here is that a cocatenated field if it should be based on a calc'field as you suggest will sort according to the first word, which would give:

February 2007

February 2008

February 2009

February 2010

March 2007

March 2008 ...etc

--sd