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Archiver > TMG > 2001-11 > 1004727495


From: Terry Reigel <>
Subject: Re: [TMG] date field
Date: Fri, 02 Nov 2001 13:58:15 -0500
References: <5.1.0.14.0.20011101194725.00b10830@mail.eskimo.com>


Victoria wrote:

> I'm trying to enter a burial date in the date field. However, the entire
> four numbers of the year is not readable. So what is the best way to enter
> 19__ , preferably without getting the irregular date warning?

There is no way to actually enter 19__ without getting the irregular date warning because it is, by definition, an irregular date. As Eric has suggested, entering a range would have an equivalent meaning and will make regular, but may not have the appearance you want. Further, if you have the day and/or month and a partial year, you may want to record those, as in 5 May 19__.

You can't just enter 19__ because TMG drops the two underscores for some reason, even though it recognizes it as irregular (perhaps because TMG uses underscores to represent unknown date elements?) But you can enter 19?? or 19--, and probably other substitutes. You will probably want to put a real date in the sort date field so the tag will sort properly.

There is one special case. If you only have one digit missing, you cannot use a single question mark, because TMG recognizes a questionable date ending with a question mark as a regular date, and changes 198? to 0198? - the solution to that, supplied by Larry Davies on this list early this year, is to change one of the spaces to a non-breaking space by holding the 'alt' key and typing 0160 on the numeric keypad. This makes it an irregular date and allows you to enter something like 189?

Terry Reigel

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