Age Calculations

I used the formula above to do a calculation to determine the age at death. I subtracted the Date of Death field from the Date of Birth field and divided by 60, 60 again, 24, and 365.5 as shown above. My mother died May 22, 2007. Her birthdate is June 15, 1926. The value displayed is 80 and it should be 79. Any suggestions?

Although my result was rounded and it’s actually 80.9 years old. Just add a decimal place to your Calculation field.

Hi Ted,

There are various options you can do to accomplish this depending on the outcome you prefer.

TRUNC: Discards the fractional part of a number. e.g. TRUNC(-3.2) is -3, TRUNC(3.2) is 3.
CEIL: CEIL(-3.2) = 3, CEIL(3.2) = 4
FLOOR: FLOOR(-3.2) = -4, FLOOR(3.2) = 3

So you could add one of the above function around your entire formula.

For example:

FLOOR(($now – Birth Date) / 60 / 60 / 24 / 365.25)

Thanks!

Brendan

Brendan,
I am using a db of deceaced ancestors where I use date fields and calculations similar to the above:
($now – [Birthday] )/(365*24*60*60)
It works just fine.
I do have an issue when travelling (I live in Australia and travel to the U.S. (across the international date line so mostly it is the day before in the U.S.)
The issue is not with the calculation but the fact that the date seems to change in the birthdate and date of death (date) fields to the day before the actual date. I assume this is because the date field is sensitive to the Timezone on the device.
It seems to me that this behaviour is not desirable for most applications of the date field once populated. Exceptions might be ‘date modified’ type fields.
Any ideas on how I might prevent this behaviour or is it something for you to consider for a future update?
Kind regards
Bruce

This sounds the problem I brought up 6 months ago in this topic:

Record dates change when switching time zones

Has any progress been made in how to properly handle this?

Hi Brendan,
I appreciate your problem in changing the format of a field type – practically this seems like a dangerous solution since it could through up all kinds of consequences across the user base.
I also appreciate the difficulties of dealing with timezones in software. Complex doesn’t begin to describe it!

One possible solution I thought of us to simply create a new data type for ‘absolute date’ (or call it what you will) which might store the data as an absolute date in a textural representation. Those of us who want to use this could simply convert the date fields to the new format.
I guess that leaves the calculation of elapsed time since that date and I suppose you could convert the text representation back into Unix epoch in the same (current) Timezone as ‘now’ when making the calculation but I am not sure this will not fall foul of our original issue – this is doing my head in!

Regards
Bruce

Hi!

I have a “age” fields in my forms, and I’m able to calculate based on birth date and current date using the above formula.

However, I have individuals ranging from a few days old, to 80 years old in my database, so I’d like to be able to display the calculated age in “x years, x months, x days, x hours”. Any chance that a Duration will be added in the Number format? “Time in hours, minutes, seconds is already available and works fine with the calculation. Maybe I’m missing something, but it’s seems it would be that difficult to push that format forward and add the option of displaying it in years, months, days? It would really help!

Thanks!

I found an (imperfect) workaround using another Checkmark field (Age > 1 yo?) and the following calculation:
($now – Birth Date)/(60*60*24*30)/((11*Age>1yo?)+1)

If the individual is older than 1 year old, I check the box and the formula automatically divides by 12.

Not perfect, since I only get a number, but will do for now. If anyone has an idea on how to add/display “months” or “years” depending on the presence or absence of the checkmark, I’d love to hear it!

Hi Bill,

You just have to put in a separate field that holds the date. You can then change that field and put in whatever date you want.

Like

(End Date – Start Date) / 60 / 60 / 24 / 365.25

The above would calculate the number of years between end date and start date.

I must be missing something for age calculation, I’ve used “($now – Birth Date) / 60 / 60 / 24 / 365.25” which gives me age in years and decimals. I would still like it in years, months, days. I tried “YYMMDD(birth date, NOW())” with no results. I’m using an IPhone with TapForms 5.1.2. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Fred

Brendan,

I had been using TapForms LT.

Two weeks ago I purchased 4.0.7 from ITunes.

Earlier this week I purchased 5.1.2 again from ITunes. All for the Years, Months, Days option.

Will I now need to purchase 5.2?

I would be willing to try the beta version.

Fred

Brendan,
I am now using 5.2.1 and still having problems with age calculation. In formula, I’m using YYMMDD(Birth Date, NOW()) and Number Format I’ve selected TIME (years, months, days). Age is coming up blank. My Record has Name, Birth Date, Age. With the previous formula ($now – Birth Date) / 60 / 60 / 24 / 365.25 I would get the number of years with a decimal. I’m sure I’m doing something wrong.

Fred

Hi Brendan,
If you recognise my email address, you will know that I don’t have a lot of working knowledge of databases – I basically use them to search information that I have built up over the years. However, I am running a summer school for children and it would be really helpful for me to be able to enter a date of birth and have another field automatically calculate the child’s age. I appreciate you have given the formula above (TRUNC((($now – Birthdate + 86400)) / 60 / 60 / 24 / 365.25)), however, what I need to know is what I now do with this. I have tried entering it in a new field that I have assumed I should set to calculation. Do I need to rename the “Date of Birth” field to “birthdate”. Thank you for any help you can give me.
I am now running 5.2.

Is there a new way to do this? I can’t get it to work? I’m in the uk region. Using iOS 5.36

How do I get an age between two dates?

I get my ages with this….

YEARS([Birth Date];TODAY())

I’m still not getting this to work. I am using Tap Forms 5 on a MBP. What format should I use for birth date and what type should I select for the field? Thank you, Christine

Simon, always select the field from the drop down don’t try and just type the name in. The drop down will give your everything you need for the field. It will format it properly.

Can you take a screenshot of your formula and attach it?

Hi Christine,

I think Sam meant a screenshot of your own formula edit screen.

The issue may be that if you’re using the Mac version then you need to double-click on your field name in the list of fields to insert it into the formula. If you just copy and paste, then the formula won’t be referencing your date field properly. On the Mac version you should see a field name within a bubble. On iOS the field names are surrounded by square brackets.

Thanks!

Brendan

You want to use text if you’re using YYMMDD or YYMM because they return a text whilst YEARS returns a number. If you scroll down on the function list on the right, when you click on the function it will tell you what it returns. Generally text is a safe type when debugging because it will at least give you a result. I’ve attached a quick screenshot of a calculation I did quickly and what it looks like.

If you can share what your edit formula window looks like then it will likely help understand what is going on.

Oh, am I so near and yet still so far! I now have the function doing something, but getting the wrong answer and the same answer for everyone. I added my own date of brith as in the screen shot, but the answer comes back as 51 years when it should be 56. Also, when I change the date of birth, the answer remains at 51 years and it is the same answer for every record. I think I will just continue to calculate each child’s age by arithmetic. Thank you for you continued help. Brendan has been trying to help me with another issue and I am beginning to wonder if my Tap Forms app is corrupted in some way.
Keep safe,
Christine