Finding incomplete dates

[Eise van Dijk]

I think this was possible but can't remember how to do it..

Looking for a way to list all dates that are incomplete, ie. missing day or missing day & month.

[Eise van Dijk]

No answer so I gather it's not possible.

[Bob White]

????? If you try to enter an incomplete date, you would have to use the Customize choice to override Reunion's date checking. If all of your data entry has been in Reunion, I would think there are close to zero incomplete dates in your file. I don't know how to search for same. There are several users on this forum that are way ahead of me on customized searches. Maybe one of them will rise to the challenge!

[theKiwi]

I can think of two ways to do this - one you have to look at a list by eye, the other you can have Excel figure it out for you...

1 - Open the index into a new window, then choose as many column headings as you need to cover all the fields that have dates in them. Now just look down that list carefully to see what dates are complete and what dates aren't complete

2 - do the above, but then Export the list out to a Plain Text File. Open that Plain text file in Excel so that all the dates are in columns (make sure that all the columns are formatted as Text so that Excel doesn't do stupid things with dates that are pre 1901). Insert an empty column after each of the columns that have dates in them, and then put a calculation into each cell of these columns to find the length of the date field ( =LEN(cell) ). Then in turn sort the spreadsheet by the various columns that have this calculation in it so that small numbers are at the top of the list. A full date will have 10 or 11 characters, a year only date will have 4 characters, something like "abt 1700" is 8 characters. Then you can peruse the columns of dates to see where the odd ones are.

I didn't say it would be easy....

Roger

[Tony Harbord]

Select the Lists button then Events. From the Events List , select the Settings button at the bottom (Cog Wheel), from the drop down Menu after the "AND" choose " With Partial Dates".
Use the other options from the drop down e.g. Custom Dates, to find more.
Then use "With Date of Any Kind, click the sort symbol at the top of the Date Column, this does a rough sort of the "about ", "before" type of dates. This seems to cover most incomplete dates. You may have to use the Find Button to tidy up.

[Tony Harbord]

Click the ? at bottom left of the events list for an excellent description of the various settings