Age Calculation

[tmac]

I use the following calc field for age:

NumToText(Year(Today) - Year(dob)- Case(Today< Date(Month(dob), Day(dob), Year(Today)), 1, 0)) & "/ " &

NumToText(Mod(Month(Today) - Month(dob) + 12 - Case(Day(Today) < Day(dob), 1, 0), 12))

It works beautifully except for one thing, until the user enters dob, the calc field shows a nonsense year that is distracting. I understand the concept of

"not IsEmpty" but since I didn't write the calculation I'm using, I hesitate to play around with it for fear of ending up with a mess that no longer calculates rather than the ideal situation where the age field waits for all relevant data before displaying.

Can anyone help?

[Vaughan]

Yeah... first thing to do is backup the database with the Save a Copy As command. Now you don't have to worry about buggering anything up!

Second thing, I also "backup" a complicated calculation field (using the duplicate button in the Define Fields dialog box) and work on this one. When I have it working I copy the new calculation and paste it into the original field. Then delete the duplicate field. (If I bugger it I just delete the field and try again by dup-ing the original once more.)

I try to avoid the Today function and use Status[CurrentDate] and Status[CurrentTime] instead. These functions are better because they can be re-evaluated at any time: Today is only evaluated when the database first opens, which is a bummer if you leave the program running for a cople of days -- it will be wrong.

To solve the "nonsense year" appearing before a dob is entered, just nest the whole calculation in a case[] function...

Case[isEmpty[dob], "",

NumToText(Year(Today) - Year(dob) - Case(Today< Date(Month(dob), Day(dob), Year(Today)), 1, 0)) & "/ " &

NumToText(Mod(Month(Today) - Month(dob) + 12 - Case(Day(Today) < Day(dob), 1, 0), 12))

]