Creating Calculated Fields in a Form

Now let’s take a look at calculated fields in Tap Forms 5 on the Mac. With calculated fields, we’re able to perform calculations based on different values. Let’s see how this works. Let’s go to my Mac.

Let’s go back over to my grocery list here, and let’s say I wanted to create a field that had the item and the aisle. The way that I would do this is through calculated fields. If you had a contact form, maybe you want to have the first name and the last name as a field; you had a separate field for first name, you have a separate field per last name. And then what you want to do is combine those into a separate field called full name. So, how do we create these calculated fields?

Well, the first thing is we need to create the field itself. It is a separate field. So now I make sure that I’m looking at my Fields. Again, if you do not see this, what you want to do is click on Form until it is blue. Now, what we do is we go down to the plus here because we’re going to create a calculated field. So I click on the plus, and let’s go and change this to Calculation. We have a field title of Calculation. So let’s just call this Item and Aisle. So I just type in here Item and Aisle. So now I’ve just created a field there called Item and Aisle. But now I need to create that calculation. What I want to do is add these two items together, the item name as well as the aisle. So how do I do that?

I swipe up here to where we have our different properties, and you’re going to see Formula. From here, I just click on Edit Formula. We have a new window that opens up, and from here, I have all of my different fields. Now, remember I want to have this be the item and the aisle. So the first thing I do is I double-click on Item. When I double click on it, it moves it over to my Formula. I can also just click on the right arrow. Now, what I need to do is I need to add my Aisle in here, but before I do that, I have to add how they’re going to be grouped together. I can’t just go and add Aisle here. When I do that, you’re going to see that it just replaced it with Aisle. What happened to my item? I double-click on item. Now we’re back to item. I want to have both of them in there. So now what I do is I place my cursor there. I click on the plus, and then I double-click on Aisle. When I do that, you’re going to see; I have item in aisle. And now, when I click on save here, what it’s going to do is it’s going to show me the item in the aisle.

But before I click on save, there’s one thing that you’ll need to do. This is going to be text. So what I need to do is I need to set the result type to be Text. Right now, to set to Number. It’s going to give me an error. It’s not going to show me anything. So when I go and select Text here, now it’s going to displayed as text. So I click on save. And you’re going to see it says Cheese4.

Now, that’s really not what I want. What I would like to do is have it say cheese is in aisle four, so I need to edit that calculation again. So I go back down to Edit Formula, and then what I do is I just place my cursor here before Aisle. And now I put in a quote, and I type in what I wanted to say. So I go is in aisle and now what I need to do is I need to add a space. If I don’t add a space, it’s just going to put a right next to aisle there. So I put a space in there, end quote, and now I add another plus. So this is how you basically build a formula.

So now what’s going to happen is it’s going to combine all this together. It’s going to say the item name from the field, it’s going to put in there is in aisle with a space, and then it’s going to have the aisle number. I could even go as far as adding a period here, let’s make this a sentence. So now I just go over to the end here. I type in a plus; we put our quote in there, add a period. I do not need to add a space because I want the period right next to aisle. And now, when I click on save. Watch what happens. We can see cheese is in aisle 4.

I forgot a space there, didn’t I. Let’s go back over to Edit Formula. What I need to do is add a space in front of is. I click on save, and now we can see it says cheese is in aisle 4.

Now that’s a basic calculation, but we can really do quite a bit with these calculations. To see what you can do with it. You just click on Edit Formula, and then over on the right, you’re going to see Functions. There are a number of different functions that you can use with a nice description describing what they can do. So you have a number of different calculations here. If you’re familiar with FileMaker Pro, this might look familiar to you as well. So when I’m finished, I just click on Save. Now, what I want to do is move this down towards the bottom. How do we do that? We go back over to our fields. And then we just drag this down, and we’re going to see it’s down at the bottom here.

So that’s how we create calculations in Tap Forms 5 on the Mac. The first thing we need to do is we need to create the field and select it as a calculation type field. Once we do that, we’re able to edit the formula. Click on Edit Formula, and start building your formula. By default, it’s going to come back with a result of a number. If you’re going to use text, like what I did, what you want to do is make sure that the result is set to Text. You can also set it to a Date. So you could do date calculations as well. You have a number of different functions that you can use. To see all the Functions. You just go over to the right and swipe or scroll through to see all your different functions.

So that’s how you create calculated fields and Tap Forms 5 on the Mac.