On using a global and calc in versions before 9, excellent idea. That would work great.

As for coloring simply based on the day name, in some cases that would work, but it is a slightly different result. See my previous (6-19-2008) comment.

Geoff

That will work well if you’re certain every sequential day will be represented in the list. But it breaks down if you have gaps. For instance, suppose you have 3 records on January 3rd, none for the 4th, and then a few more for the 5th. In that case, the two sets would be side-by-side and of the same color.

Geoff

Yes, if the data isn’t sorted it “works” in that contiguous ranges are still colored properly, but it doesn’t do what you describe. If you want that behavior, you might consider using a conditional formatting approach based on the date itself. For instance, imagine these 5 conditional formatting rules:

Mod(GetAsNumber(DATE_FIELD), 5) = 0
Mod(GetAsNumber(DATE_FIELD), 5) = 1
Mod(GetAsNumber(DATE_FIELD), 5) = 2
Mod(GetAsNumber(DATE_FIELD), 5) = 3
Mod(GetAsNumber(DATE_FIELD), 5) = 4

This would have the problem that two side-by-side dates that are an even multiple of 5 days apart would be the same color, which might be problematic. But I’m not sure how possible it would be to fix that problem and still keep same-color-for-same-date behavior.

You could also color code based on the number of days in the past, which might be cool. One color for 0 to 3 days, another for 4 to 10, etc… Something like that.

Anyway, thanks to Todd for inspiring this. It is a very cool idea to color code rows based on data similarities.

Geoff

Ideally (this is based on what my client wanted) is that if there were duplicated, but non-contiguous, dates they would show up the same colour. In this version they take on the next value in the custom formatting series.

Thanks for your work on this

Sorry. I should have tested first. The problem is that I was playing pretty foot-loose with my error checking because the “not” operator cleaned up any messes all by itself.

When I check the color of the previous record, I don’t bother to make sure there is a previous record. This works fine in the 1/0/1/0 case, but the mod function isn’t happy with this.

So here is a revised version that works properly:

Let(
  [previous_record = Get(RecordNumber) - 1;
  previous_color = If (previous_record = 0, 0, GetNthRecord(_COLOR; previous_record))];

  If(GetNthRecord ( DATE ; previous_record ) = DATE;
     previous_color;
     Mod(previous_color + 1; 4)
  )
)

Let me know if that works for you.

Geoff

I thought about addressing that in the article, but I was getting tired

I think it should be fairly easy. Instead of:

not previous_color

You would do something along these lines:

mod(previous_color + 1, 4)

That will give you results that go 0, 1, 2, 3, 0, 1, 2, 3, etc… If you change the 4 as the second parameter to something else, you’ll get a different number of options in your cycle. Then you just need conditional formatting rules for each possible value.

Geoff