Hi Bob, 1492 is not a date, it's a year. So the assumption by MIPro to treat it as a numeric is actually quite valid. Typically a year can be represented as a small integer, so you can safely change the field type to this.
And an integer type is usually the best way to represent a year. It's searchable, comparable, calculable and sortable. If you're dissatisfied with the thousands seperator (i.e. the comma), you can also turn the field type into a 4 char string. Provided that you don't have year values prior to 1000 AD is every bit as usable as an integer field type. However, to do calculations with a string field you off course need to apply the "Val()" function appropriately. If you insist on using the intrinsic Date type, you need to supply day and month for each value. There's no such thing as a "null" value in MIPro, and certainly not a partly "nulled" date value available, so do stay with the integer if you possibly can. Best regards/Med venlig hilsen Lars V. Nielsen GisPro, Denmark http://www.gispro.dk/ http://hjem.get2net.dk/lars-online/ WGS84: 10.20'40"E 55.20'20"N ----- Original Message ----- From: "Bob Hudson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Saturday, December 28, 2002 11:33 PM Subject: MI-L How to show a number as a date? > Using MI 5.5. I have a list of dates for historic buildings in a table, > which MapInfo insisted were numbers when I created the MI table from a > spreadsheet- so 1492 appears as 1,492. The field type at present is "float". > What kind of field can I convert this column to so the dates appear as > dates, but remain searchable (so "character" would not seem to be a useful > choice) , and can be put in numerical order? > Bob Hudson > Archaeology Department, University of Sydney, Australia. > http://www.archaeology.usyd.edu.au/~hudson/bobhpage.htm > * > > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > List hosting provided by Directions Magazine | www.directionsmag.com | > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Message number: 4698 > --------------------------------------------------------------------- List hosting provided by Directions Magazine | www.directionsmag.com | To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message number: 4699
