I've got a date field that is formatted to display a date as "Day of
Week, Month Day, Year" (such as "Saturday, December 5, 2009"). I want
to export that field so it reads that way, but all I ever get when I
try to export is the MM/DD/YYYY format. Any suggestions?

Steve@ASU <redrock2512 (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote:

The date is a number, and it's this number that gets exportet The export
file doesn't know how a field was formatted in FMP. Format the field in
the app that reads your export file.

If the date is part of a text, you can create a calc field, text result
and use the date functions to write the date the way you want to see it.
--
http://clk.ch

On Dec 6, 1:09*am, c... (AT) tele2 (DOT) ch (Christoph Kaufmann) wrote:
Chris,

Does this work for the reverse - where if I'm importing data from a
spreadsheet with a date field, can I setup a date function on import
as well? I've got several spreadsheets with date/time stamps on them
that I'd like to preserve, but when the data comes in, it only shows
the numeric value and not the date value, even though the field is
setup as a date or time.

TIA.

Brian

ibgarrett <brian (AT) garrett (DOT) net> wrote:

In Filemaker, a date is the number of days since Jan 1st, 0001, time is
the number of seconds since midnight, and a timestamp is the number of
seconds sind midnight on Jan 1st, 0001. If you want to see a really huge
number, try the ReadAsNumber function on a timestamp field.

Other applications may have (and do have) different ways to store date
and time information. I once had an Excel version that counted from Jan
1st, 1900, don't know if this is the case in your spreadsheet app - view
dates as numbers to find out.

The safest way is to take the spreadsheet data apart, i.e. create a
speficic column for day, month, year, hour, minutes and seconds, then
import all that in filemaker number fields and have filemaker functions
put them together the way you want it.

If you want to this more directly, it's try and error. I've seen
Filemaker reading dates from an Excel sheet correctly, but things may be
different in different versions, apps and systems.
--
http://clk.ch

On Dec 6, 10:42*am, c... (AT) tele2 (DOT) ch (Christoph Kaufmann) wrote:
Chris,

That kind of what I figured I was going to have to do, the unfortunate
part is the data I'm getting in is coming from an Access db that I'm
working on converting to FM via a spreadsheet. The data has been very
poorly managed up until now, so I'm working on getting it cleaned up
before and import into FMP. The date stamp converts over to a unique
4 digit (if I remember correctly) number. So I just need to figure
out how to crack that part of the import to preserve that bit of
information.

Thanks for the advice on it.

Brian

Steve@ASU wrote:

Go to a layout where that date field resides. Format the field on that
layout in the desired format. When exporting, select the option to
export using the current layout.

Or...create a calc field with text result that formats the field the way
you want it and then just export that text field.