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Hello !


I’m new to airtable and struggling to write a formula that allows me to extract dates from a field. I have tried many different formulas found online but nothing matches my case.


I have a SPRINT column that hosts in each field a set of dates: 2022-01-03, 2022-01-10, 2022-01-17… (can go up to 53 dates).


I would like to extract from any of the fields in the SPRINT column the FIRST date (2022-01-03) and send it to another field in a new column named START.


Then, extract from any of the fields in the SPRINT column the LAST date (2022-01-17) and send it to another field in a new column named END.


Do you think that is possible and if so could you help me find out the correct formula ?


Thanks !

Welcome to the community, @David_Y! :grinning_face_with_big_eyes: I’ve got a few ideas of how to pull this off, but before I can get to that, what type of field is your {SPRINT} field? Single line text? Lookup? Link to records in another table? Something else?


Hi @Justin_Barrett ! Thanks for taking the time to check out this issue. 🙂


In the TASKS table, I have a SPRINT DATES column, which is linked to the SPRINTS table, from which I pull the dates from.


Then, in the TASKS table, I’ve setup a SPRINTS column which is a Lookup field, linked to the SPRINT DATES column.





Hi @Justin_Barrett ! Thanks for taking the time to check out this issue. 🙂


In the TASKS table, I have a SPRINT DATES column, which is linked to the SPRINTS table, from which I pull the dates from.


Then, in the TASKS table, I’ve setup a SPRINTS column which is a Lookup field, linked to the SPRINT DATES column.





Sorry for the delay, @David_Y . This can be done using a couple of rollup fields in your eTasks] table. You probably won’t even need the existing lookup field because the rollup fields will operate directly on the retrieved dates under the hood.


A rollup field has the same initial setup as a lookup field, but it adds what’s called an aggregation formula, which processes the array of retrieved values from the linked records. In your case, you could have a {Start} rollup field in the table that rolls up the start dates of all linked sprints, then uses the MIN(values) aggregation formula to find the earliest of those dates. A similar rollup field named {End} could pull in the end dates of all linked sprints and find the latest date using the MAX(values) aggregation formula.


Hi @Justin_Barrett !


Your solution solved my problem in a simple and elegant way.

Thanks a lot for your help and your thorough explanations, I really appreciate it ! :winking_face:


Cheers,


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