Hello,

I have a auto-create timestamp field that I've formatted through the
date and time format dialog boxes to be very close to what I need:
YYYYmm dd hhmm (24 hr clock, always 2 characters for month and day). I
need to export the time stamp into another application, and it would
be helpful to have the timestamp without spaces.

In order to get rid of the spaces, which I found I can do with

Substitute (timestamp_field);" "; "")

But to accomplish this, I have put the date into a calculated field,
which reverts the timestamp into what seems to be a default format -
e.g., 5/9/2007 6:42:39 PM. Hmm, I lose my original timestamp
formatting when I change timestamp to text in the calculation to
demolish spaces.

I've been looking through the help files here and see that I'm not
alone - but I haven't been able to write the correct formula to remedy
my situation and reformat the timestamp.

What I need is an auto-create timestamp in the format YYYYmmddhhmm (24
hr clock, always 2 characters for month and day).

Any suggestions?

Thanks so much for your time, it is always much appreciated!

enJoy,
cat

On 9 May 2007 19:29:02 -0700, cat <cathytyner (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote:

Try creating a calculation field based on your timestamp. For the
calc use a Filter statement to extract the spaces and other extraneous
characters. Something like this:

[newfield] = Filter ( [timestamp]; "1234567890" )

Make sure your original timestamp has everything in the same order you
want your new one to have, i/e YYYY/MM/DD hh:mm will yield
YYYYMMDDhhmm.

Hope this helps.

--
FW

On May 9, 10:55 pm, FastWolf <wolfsof... (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote:
Thanks for your suggestion - there is a problem though. The filter
works as you said, but FM still does not retain my timestamp format
through the filter calculation. Perhaps ANY calculation would
translate the timestamp to text and therfore revert the timestamp
format to FM default of 5/9/2007 6:42:39 PM. So, even though I use
your filter on my formatted timestamp of YYYYmmddhhmm (24 hr clock,
always 2 characters for month and day), what I get is 59200764239 -
(FM default timestamp format without the spaces and non-numeric
characters). For what I need, this result is in the wrong order,
includes the seconds, is a 12 hour clock, and has only one character
for 1 digit month or day, e.g., May: 5 instead of 05.

Still stuck...but I liked learning the Filter function - very cool!

Any other possible solutions?

On May 10, 4:07 pm, cat <cathyty... (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote:

On 10 May 2007 16:07:24 -0700, cat <cathytyner (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote:

You're right, I never realized how strict FMP is about storing dates.
You can format your dates to display any way you like, but they still
are stored on FMP's default format. However, I have most of the
solution worked out for you. There's enough here for you to go the
rest of the way on your own.

You need three new fields; for example:

d_date_only = [date field] = Creation Date

d_time_only = [time field] = Creation Time

t_date_string = [calc field: result is text] =
Right ( d_date_only ; 4 )
&"0"
&Left ( d_date_only ; 1 )
&Middle (d_date_only ; 3 ; 2 )
&Left ( d_time_only ; 2 )
&Right ( d_time_only; 2 )

The calc in this case adds the missing zero for the month since May is
a single digit month. You can use a few if/else statements to pick
out which months and days are 1 or 2 digit and format accordingly.

Hope this helps, and best of luck.

--
FW