Argh: Counting employees between a period of time

[#1]

want to count the number of Employees (by counting their IDs) only for those records where the contents of the START_DATE field is greater than or equal to a date value in the variable vStartPeriod.

It shouldn't be the hardest problem in the world, but for the life of me, I can't get QV to return anything other than a zero. 

Here's the most recent thing that didn't work:

=count({<START_DATE={$(>=vStartPeriod)}>} EMPLOYEE_NUMBER)

Other variations that didn't work include...

=count({<START_DATE={$(">=" & vStartPeriod)}>} EMPLOYEE_NUMBER)

and about 20 other similar variations with teensy weensy differences.

To top it off, for some reason QV has started always saying my expression is "OK", even when it's clearly not.

Maybe it just got tired of complaining. Maybe that's QV's way of saying, "Yes, dear".

In any case, what the heck am I missing here?

Thanks

[marcus_sommer · Accepted solution]

It should be more look like:

=count({<START_DATE={">=$(=vStartPeriod)"}>} EMPLOYEE_NUMBER) or

=count({<START_DATE={">=$(=$(vStartPeriod=)"}>} EMPLOYEE_NUMBER)

and the format from the variable must be excactly the same like this from field.

- Marcus

[sunny_talwar]

May be this:

=Count({<START_DATE={"$(='>=' & vStartPeriod)"}>} EMPLOYEE_NUMBER)

Where this -> ='>=' & vStartPeriod in a text box should give you the period you are looking for in the same format as START_DATE

[#4]

The first one worked so I stopped there.

Thanks!