David-- Set the form design field option for date "DisplayOnly" to false and the option for "ShowButton" to true. If you show the button, your users should click the three dots to get the date assistant and enter begin and end date info just as they would in the standard data entry display. We use lots of forms and haven't had any trouble with people making changes to the date label without entering the search dates, but I think most of our forms users became accustomed to the date assistant setup in the GS data entry mode before they started using custom forms. Can you get everyone started in standard data entry first? I wish there were a way to keep them from typing in the date label but still show the button, but the button goes away when you tell it to display only arrrgh. --Jessica ______________________ Jessica Milby TMS Systems Manager Philadelphia Museum of Art Phone: 215-684-7283 Fax: 215-235-0035 [log in to unmask] ________________________________ From: The Museum System (TMS) Users [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Aylsworth, David Sent: Thursday, August 14, 2008 11:49 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Search dates in forrm designer Have any of you who have been designing your own forms had problems with putting the "Date" field onto the form? I'm concerned that it doesn't seem possible to add the "Begin Date" and "End Date", so if people update the date field, they do so without updating the dates that I have been telling people to use for searching. Or am I missing an obvious way to search by date of object? We've got a fair number of objects in the collection that the official date is "not dated", but users still want them to come up if they are doing a search for works from a particular time period. Putting "circa" dates into the main date field seems to block them from coming up in a search by date range, as do phrases like "nineteenth century", etc. That's why I really LOVE the "begin date" and "end date" fields... Our previous database did not have them, and our conversion to TMS seemed erratic with what records got begin and end dates updated. We've been making an effort to get them in there now, and have gotten some success with getting people to search by them when they want a reliable list of objects in a given range. I'm concerned that if I let them enter a date without the automatic updating of begin and end date, that we'll have unreliable data again. I almost don't want that field available on the form if it doesn't allow for entering begin and end dates. Have any of you wrestled with this problem already? I have a feeling that I'm overlooking something very obvious again... Thanks as always! David David Aylsworth Museum of Fine Arts, Houston Registrar for Collections telephone: 713-639-7824 fax: 713-639-7780