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Merging Date And Time Fields

Filed Under Bento Tips 

Although Bento™ support both date and time fields it is possible to combine both a date and time in a single field. This combined field is used in the integrated iCal Libraries and it may be necessary to take the data from the two individual fields and combine them into one new one. Unfortunately this is not as easy as it could be so here is a quick guide to doing it.

For the sake of this article we will use the following sample data which is stored in a CSV file.


The Sample Data

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However, from step 3 onwards the same techniques can be applied where you have the data in Bento in two separate fields.

  1. Import the data file into a new Library. Ensure that the date and time fields are set to be date and time field types.

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  2. Create a Calculation field which merges the date and time field and stores the result as a text field.

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  3. Export the data to a CSV file.
  4. Import the data file from step 3 and ensure that the combined date and time fields are imported as Date fields.

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  5. Once the data has been imported you will need to edit the combined fields so that they show the time as well as the date.

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Comments

3 Responses to “Merging Date And Time Fields”

  1. Tom on November 14th, 2008 5:52 pm

    Hi,
    I have the inverse problem, I’ve been trying without success to find a way to extrat the hour from the start_date of the data from ical…

    Have you any idea on how to do that? (I wanted this to do a search for all events that start after 8 in the morning)

  2. Simon on November 16th, 2008 11:28 pm

    Hi Tom. I’m not sure f this is possible because of the limited capabilities Bento has for calculations and filtering. It may be worth posting your question in the official forums at http://forums.filemaker.com/fmbnto/ however to see if anyone there has any ideas.

  3. Tom on November 17th, 2008 4:05 pm

    Thanks I’ll try my luck there…

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