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Mar 12, 2020 01:16 PM
I have a formula for calculating when I can plant seeds, according to the LFD (last frost date), which is and will remain 3/29/2020. Weeks is how many weeks before the LFD I can plant the seeds. The formula:
DATEADD({LFD},-{Weeks Start},‘weeks’)
Currently I have a whole column for LFD that is set to autofill 3/29/2020 into every row, of which I have 350+. Instead of this whole column for LFD, is there a way I can somehow reference this number one time within a formula, or within one cell somewhere instead of a column of 350 rows with the same number?
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Mar 12, 2020 08:22 PM
Is this what you’re looking for?
DATEADD(DATESTR("2020-03-29"),-{Weeks Start},'week')
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Mar 12, 2020 07:55 PM
Hi, thanks for answering. Would you mind showing me how to apply your response to my example? I’m new to this and I read over what you wrote a few times but I don’t understand how to apply it to my issue at all. Ideally, I would like to find a way to change LFD to 3/29/2020 within the formula, but I wasn’t able to get it to recognize it as a date, so the formula would not compute.
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Mar 12, 2020 08:03 PM
You’re right, that didn’t help at all upon re-reading.
Are you just looking to replace {LFD} with some date string so that you don’t need it as a stand-alone date field? If so, I’m testing it out now.
Otherwise, trying to imagine what your table looks like to suss out the end-goal.
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Mar 12, 2020 08:21 PM
To change LFD to a static date in the formula, use the DATETIME_PARSE
function.
DATEADD(
DATETIME_PARSE("3/29/2020", 'MM/DD/YYYY'),
-{Weeks Start},
'weeks'
)
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Mar 12, 2020 08:22 PM
Is this what you’re looking for?
DATEADD(DATESTR("2020-03-29"),-{Weeks Start},'week')
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Mar 12, 2020 08:26 PM
Thank you! That completely solved it! What does DATESTR stand for? I kept trying to put in different formats of 03-29-2020 with no luck, so I made that unnecessary column for it. I had no idea about DATESTR.
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Mar 12, 2020 08:40 PM
It’s neat to find out that DATESTR
can output a datetime when nested in another function. I didn’t know that.
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Mar 13, 2020 07:10 AM
DATESTR stands for ‘date string.’ A string is just some text inside quotes. DATESTR takes that string and converts it to a ‘datetime’ data type. While you and I might see the characters 03-29-2020 as a date, it isn’t interpreted as such outright. Functions like DATESTR, or DATETIME_PARSE as @kuovonne demonstrated, help with all that type conversion. Data type errors are pretty common. For example, some functions expect a number 123
and will error out when they receive a string with a number in it instead "123"
. Finicky stuff. Happy planting :slightly_smiling_face:
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