deleting date data

How do you delete date data? That is, suppose you have a database with a date field. The date field is in a client record and indicates when the user wants to contact the client. The user enters a date into a record. Later, the user would need to delete the date when they no longer need to schedule a call.

I would like to delete the date by programming; assigning a null value to the date field. I get an error message. Assigning a zero-length strings also produces errors since strings cannot be entered into the date.

I could just copy the whole record into another record except for the date field. However, I was hoping there was a more direct way of doing this.

If you're using Access (97, should work with 2000 too) or SQL server you should be able to NULL your date fields. One way is to do it with a SQL statement on your connection object:
<PRE>conYourConnectionObject.Execute "UPDATE YourTableName SET YourDateField=NULL" WHERE YourPrimaryKeyField=" & PrimaryKeyValueToBeAffected</PRE>You could probably do this in a recordset if you set the field to NULL inside a string like so:
<PRE> rstYourRecordset.Fields("YourDateField") = "NULL"</PRE>
Cheers,
Paul

Thank you for your suggestion. I couldn't get it to work with my set up. I have a text box bound to a date field using a datacontrol. I don't think a date field will accept a Null.

However, I did find a solution by trial and error. What I did was to set the date field to "Empty" in the underlying database.

dtaDatabase1.recordset.datefield = "Empty"

This is a method I haven't found in the MS VB 5 online help or my reference books. I had a hard time figuring it out because I was trying to set the bound text box to "Empty," which it apparently doesn't accept.