If statement with dates

[word]

I have tried various iterations and have not been able to find a
solution.

We use a program to insert bookmarks into word from an SQL server. One
of the fields is a date and it is either a date or an empty field. I
am trying to get the date to display if there is one and an "N/A" if
there is not.

I have tried the following

{ =if imported_date <> 0 imported_date N/A}

I've tried it with { } around the bookmarks and " " and all sorts of
switches. I even tried converting the date to a different format
yyyyMMdd and comparing it.

Please somebody help.

Thanks,

Ryan

(e-mail address removed)

 

[Jay Freedman]

Hi Ryan,

What does the program insert if the date in the database is empty? Is it an
empty bookmark? If so, the field you need is this:

{ IF {imported_date} <> "" {imported_date} "N/A"}

To get the braces around the bookmark name nested inside the IF field, you
MUST use Ctrl+F9 -- you can't just type the braces on the keyboard.

What this says is:

- Evaluate the content of the bookmark named imported_date.
- If that content is not an empty string (represented by ""), then show the
content of the bookmark.
- If that content is an empty string, then show the string "N/A".

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[word]

Thanks very much, but it does not work as you've typed it. The
bookmark is blank, but I get a syntax error still. It seems like it
should work based on everything I have read.

Here is what I have typed in (using Ctrl-F9 when needed)

{ if {Contract Date} <> "" {Contract Date} "N/A" }

It gives me an undefined bookmark error. So I took out the braces and
it doesn't give me an error, but is blank. The bookmark is empty when
I see the contents with the brackets [].

I would be happy to pay for consulting services if someone would tackle
this issue for me.

 

[Tony Jollans]

Bookmark names cannot have spaces in them so what is "Contract Date"?

 

[word]

Well, the database program allows us to insert bookmarks into the word
documents using a customized bookmark assistant program. I don't know
technically how they do it, just that it works like that. We go
through a template document and place these bookmarks where we have
dynamic information that needs to be populated. I've used bookmarks
within the word tables for calculations, so I don't think it has
anything to do with a space in the name.

I'm as confused about this as anybody, seems like half the time my
calcs work, half the time they don't.

 

[Tony Jollans]

I suspect it's looking for a bookmark called "Contract" - and not finding
one.

Can you look at your bookmarks under Insert > Bookmarks and see what there
is?

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Perhaps the bookmark is actually "Contract_Date"?

 

[word]

The bookmark is actually kf50e52e783c6487a96 but is actually being
inserted as Contract Date so that I know what it is. Once again, I
don't know how all of this works with the SQL server, but a program
called boomark assistant allows me to place these named bookmarks
throughout the document.

The search continues and I appreciate all the input.

Ryan

 

[Tony Jollans]

If you're going to manually edit the results of another program you're going
to have to use whatever it generates. In this case it looks like you will
need ..

{ if {kf50e52e783c6487a96} <> "" {kf50e52e783c6487a96} "N/A" }

This may give you some maintainability problems - depending on how your
bookmark assistant works - I don't know.