Easy lookup by date

[karatehero]

Greetings all! I'm a bit of a noob here, and I'm trying to work on a project for a customer.

I have a table that has a couple entries

ID

Date Lookup

Cost

Process Type

My process type is stuff like cut, drill, sand, a whole bunch of stuff. Actually its a foreign key to another table that has the descriptions, but i can't see that matters.

My customer wants an easy way to sum up all their process types by a date range.

I made a report up that has sub-summaries based on the process type. I added a field to my table that is a summary field called 'total'. It sums up the total of cost and restarts on the basis of each sorted group. I put it in my sub summary part and it sums up the values OK.

I can go into find mode, type in a date range like 10/1/8...10/15/8, get my found set and then run the script again that filemaker generated for me. For my end users, that is just a lot of work.

Is there an easier way to restrict this report by date? I'd love to just have 2 drop down boxes labeled start date and end date that they pick and the report auto-populates with information. All that going to find mode and typing code and the such isn't going to work out.

Thanks everyone! I really appreciate anyone taking the time to help me out! I've read other post about this and non quite match up to what I want to do.

[Vaughan]

"I'd love to just have 2 drop down boxes labeled start date and end date that they pick and the report auto-populates with information."

That can be done easily... just script the process.

[karatehero]

That was sort of what I was asking :waytogo:

[Vaughan]

Have you written a script before? Basically:

1) Do the process manually, and write down the steps.

2) Convert the written steps into a script.

Many people have trouble with step 1; not knowing how to do the process manually. Converting a process to a script is usually pretty easy.

Assuming there is a global field holding the start date and another holding the end date:

Enter Find mode []

Set Field [ date ; startdate & "..." & enddate ]

Perform Find []

The script needs more than this (it needs steps to check that the start and end dates are correctly entered etc) but that's the bare bones of it.