jim Gallacher wrote:Hi,
I am trying to set up a simple database with a pop up list of person's names, a text box, a numeric field and a Calculation Sum field.
I enter some descriptive info in the text field select the person then enter a number of minutes for the time its taken. Then I wish to be able to calculate the sum of the time for each person's cumulative entries. However I cannot even make a Calculation field as the functions al give an error message.
Hi Jim,
Apologies for the delay in responding.
Calculation type fields work within a single record. From your description, there's a single Number type field in each record ('time'), so a Calculation type field with the formula SUM('time') should return the same number as is in the 'time' field.
Since you want the formula to use data from more than one record, you'll need to use a Summary type field. Summary fields take the same formulas as Calculation fields, but use data from the same field(s) in more than one record.
Note that Summary field results appear only in Page View, and must be placed in a Grand summary or Subsummary by... part of a layout. In addition, Subsummary by... parts will appear only when the data has been sorted and the sort includes a sort on the field named when inserting the Subsummary by... part.
For more information on using Summary type fields, search "summary" in AppleWorks Help (in the Help menu in AppleWorks).
When reporting "the functions al give an error message," it would be useful to include the error message itself and the function(s) that produced that error message.
Regards,
Barry