Date Switches, Bookmarks and ASK Fields

[Cheryl Cavanaugh]

I have the following code { ASK [FINALDUEDATE]"On what date does the final payment fall due? e.g. 01/29/2004?" }{ =FINALDUEDATE\@ "MMMM d, yyyy"}

The brackets around the first FINALDUEDATE indicate that I've bookmarked this as FinalDueDat

When I update the fields, I put in 01/29/2004 and my result is ALWAYS today's date which happens to be 01/09/2004

Why is it not returning the date I entered and only today's date? Help?

 

[Jay Freedman]

Hi, Cheryl,

If your field code looks exactly like what you typed here, with the
=FINALDUEDATE field embedded inside the ASK field, then I'm surprised
that you see any result at all. I think you've misunderstood several
things about the ASK field and its syntax.

First, you do *not* have to apply a bookmark inside the ASK field. You
type a bookmark name, such as FINALDUEDATE, and the ASK field
automatically creates a bookmark with that name.

Second, the ASK field does not show a result itself. The field that
shows the result is a REF field -- *not* a formula (=) field -- that
is outside the ASK field. You can replace the = sign with the REF
keyword, or you can just omit the = sign (a field code that starts
with a bookmark name is assumed to be a REF field by default). The two
fields may be next to each other, although they don't have to be
together.

Third, the REF field won't work properly if there's no space between
the FINALDUEDATE bookmark name and the \@ switch.

I have the following code { ASK [FINALDUEDATE]"On what date does the final payment fall due? e.g. 01/29/2004?" }{ =FINALDUEDATE\@ "MMMM d, yyyy"}}

The brackets around the first FINALDUEDATE indicate that I've bookmarked this as FinalDueDate

When I update the fields, I put in 01/29/2004 and my result is ALWAYS today's date which happens to be 01/09/2004.

Why is it not returning the date I entered and only today's date? Help?

 

[Cheryl Cavanaugh]

I think I figured this out, thanks to you, Jay

I did exactly as you instructed and voila! c'est perfection

Thank you so much!