Setting up a Formula to create a date from anotehr column, then freeze the column info

Platform discussions Special workflows & use cases
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Hi Guys

I would like a column, that feeds off of another column, ie Formula would be “columns” then select the column that has the date in.

So when a user adds in the said date, in the date column, the column I have built, would have this date in also. But… if the user ever changes the date in their column, my column that I have created, will hold the original date.

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Perhaps a better way of explaining…

Column 1 – has a date in that a user could change at any time.

Column 2 needs to have only the original date that was entered, never change.

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Hi Dylan,

As far as I know it can’t be done for 2 reasons:

  • you can’t reference the formula column in its own syntax, as it creates a circular reference. This prevents you from checking if your formula column is empty (to prevent any change if it is not empty).
  • you can’t use the IF statement in monday to not do anything when the condition is not met. Why does this matter? Let’s say you add a status column that you toggle between “Date Set” and “Date Not set” and you use it to check if the date is set (avoiding the circular reference). Now the problem is to write a formula that takes the date if status is “Not Set” and leaves the current date intact otherwise. You would think that IF({Status}=“Date Not Set”,{Date}) would work but it doesn’t. Monday will return True in that case.

Both issues are logical when you know how the formula column works. Formulas are run dynamically every time you display the item, so there isn’t a “current formula value” stored in the database that you could either check (point #1) or leave intact (point #2).

Of course, you could do it with a 3rd party app. With the Advanced Formula Booster it would be very easy because it allows you to write the results of your formula to any type of column and also because the IF statements can be used to not do anything if the condition is not met. The syntax would look like this:
{FrozenDate}=IF(ISEMPTY({FrozenDate}),{Date})

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So something like

When date changes, and other date is empty set other date to date

Which will only run when other date is empty.