Date To Numbers

[Dr.L]

I've created a birthdate, Now I need to extract into number form the Month, Day and Year. Certainly there is a simple solution to this...

I;ve tried Brian Dunning's as follows with no success so far...

Case (

Patient_DateofBirth = "January"; 1;

Patient_DateofBirth = "February"; 2;

Patient_DateofBirth = "March"; 3;

Patient_DateofBirth = "April"; 4;

Patient_DateofBirth = "May"; 5;

Patient_DateofBirth = "June"; 6;

Patient_DateofBirth = "July"; 7;

Patient_DateofBirth = "August"; 8;

Patient_DateofBirth = "September"; 9;

Patient_DateofBirth = "October"; 10;

Patient_DateofBirth = "Nov"; 11;

Patient_DateofBirth = "November"; 11;

Patient_DateofBirth = "december"; 12;

// default

0

)

Much thanks all!

Dr.L

[comment]

Is Patient_DateofBirth a Date field?

[Dr.L]

Yup...

[comment]

Then how about =

Month ( Patient_DateofBirth )

See also:

http://www.filemaker.com/11help/html/func_ref1.31.12.html#1028277

[Dr.L]

Bingo! When now that was easy enough...swear I tried that first, must have missed something as it returned the name of the month. Must have only used it as a text rather than as a number in the calculation...

This works also for day and year. THANK YOU!

Dr.L

[comment]

must have missed something as it returned the name of the month.

That would have been =

MonthName ( Patient_DateofBirth )

[Vaughan]

The MonthName() function returns the name of the month.

[Dr.L]

Understood...as usual it must have been user error. I believe I may have had it returned as a text rather than as a number...all is well now!

Dr.L

[comment]

I believe I may have had it returned as a text rather than as a number...all is well now!

Just to clarify: the Month() function always returns a number; if you set the result to Text, it will be converted to digits of that number. For example:

Month ( SomeDate ) // returns 4 (number)

GetAsText ( Month ( SomeDate ) ) // returns "4" (text)

[Dr.L]

It seems as though I do have one more question about the date format...once I use:

Year (date), how can I trim it to just show the last two digits for the year?

Dr.L

[comment]

Right ( Year ( date ) ; 2 )

[Dr.L]

Just figured that out...I was trying to trim first...THANKS!

Dr.L