Input date just as YYYY?

[Lisa_Shiota]

Hi! I’m working on a historical database and am putting in birth and death dates for historical figures. I currently have those field types set as dates (YYYY-MM-DD). However, there are birth/death dates for which I don’t know the months or days for these people. Is there any way to input a date as just the year (YYYY) in records where I don’t know the month or day for these fields? Thanks!

[kuovonne · Accepted solution]

No, there is not a way to input a date as just a year, without a month and year.

In cases like this where you might not know the full date, I recommend having a combination of inputs, and then using formulas.

• For example, instead of a date field, you could have three fields, one for year, one for month, and one for day. Then you could have a formula field that calculates the date (when possible).

• Or you could have a date input field for when the exact date is known, and a separate year field for when the exact date is not known. Then have a formula field that pulls the year from whichever field has a value.

[Lisa_Shiota]

Thanks for responding! I’m trying to think this through. What formula would I use to calculate a date if I were to have three separate fields for year, month, and day?

[kuovonne]

You would use DATETIME_PARSE()

For example, assuming that the day, month, and year are numbers …

DATETIME_PARSE({Day} & "/" & {Month} & "/" & {Year}, 'D-M-YYYY')

If you want to use single select fields for the month, things get a bit more complex.
You may also want to do some data validation in case people enter invalid dates.

The details are in the formula field reference.

[Lisa_Shiota]

Thanks again for your help, @kuovonne!