Formula for selection criteria

Question

Hello all.
I have a questions regarding creating a selection formula and parameters.
See attached picture. I have a table that houses all the data I need for my report .
I want to create a report with the following selection parameters
Monthly
yearly
quarterly.
if the user selects monthly I want the report to return  the most recent 12 months
if the user select yearly I want the report to return the last 5 years
and if the user selects quarterly I want the report to return the last completed 10 quarters.
Any idea how I can accomplish that?
thanks in advance for your help.

Answer 1

This is actually not that difficult.  Assuming that the parameter is named {?Time Period} you'll create a formula for start date.  I'm also assuming that you want to show up to the current date, not the end of the most recent complete time period and that you want to start on the first day of the period, not the day that corresponds to the current day and that quarters start on the first days of Jan, Apr, Jul, and Oct.  So, it will look something like this:
{@StartDate}
DateVar tmpDate;
DateVar startDate;
if {?Time Period} = 'Monthly' then
     tmpDate := DateAdd('m', -12, CurrentDate);
     startDate := Date(Year(tmpDate), Month(tmpDate), 1);
else if {?Time Period} = 'Yearly' then
     tmpDate := DateAdd('y', -5, CurrentDate);
     startDate := Date(Year(tmpDate), 1, 1);
else if {?Time Period} = 'Quarterly' then
  tmpDate := DateAdd('q', -10, CurrentDate);
  if Month(tmpDate) in [2, 5, 8, 11] then //the second month of the quarter
    tmpDate := DateAdd('m', -1, tmpDate);
  else if Month(tmpDate) in [3, 6, 9, 12] then //the third month of the quarter
    tmpDate: = DateAdd('m', -2, tmpDate);
  startDate := Date(Year(tmpDate), Month(tmpDate), 1);
startDate
You'll then go to the Select Expert and manually edit the selection formula to read something like this:
{MyTable.DateField} >= {@StartDate} and
{MyTable.DateField} <= CurrentDate
-Dell