Using In Dates Filters in Worksheet Interfaces
Most people learning Microsoft Dynamics NAV or Business Central hit a wall when they try to filter entries in worksheet windows. The general ledger is straightforward, but worksheets like the Bank Rec. Worksheet or Gen. Journal use a slightly different mechanism. If you are trying to find entries that fall within a specific date range and the normal filter box is not giving you what you expect, the In Dates panel is the tool you need. The In Dates feature is built into the worksheet framework. It is not a generic filter you type into the status bar. You access it through the worksheet's Filter window, under the In Dates option. This opens a date range dialog where you can specify a From date and a To date, then choose which date field to apply the filter against. The options typically include Posting Date, Document Date, Due Date, and sometimes Requested Shipment Date or Shipment Date depending on the worksheet you are working in.
Where to Find In Dates Worksheets Functionality
Open any worksheet window in NAV, such as a Payment Journal or Bank Reconciliation Worksheet. Click the Filter icon or press Ctrl+F. In the filter pane that appears, look for the In Dates button. It is usually sitting right there alongside other filter options like Between and Not Between. Click it and a small dialog pops up asking you to define your date range and pick the relevant date field. I spent probably three days troubleshooting a month-end close issue a while back because someone had applied a In Dates filter on the Posting Date field without realizing it. The bank reconciliation worksheet was showing zero entries even though there were clearly postings for that period. The filter was silently hiding everything outside the range. The workaround was just clearing the filter from the worksheet's Filter pane. Nothing else needed to be touched. The thing most beginners miss is that In Dates filters on worksheets do not work the same way as TableBuilder filters on regular cards and lists. On a card, you might expect to see the filter reflected clearly in the status bar. On a worksheet, the filter is often applied behind the scenes through codeunit logic rather than a plain WHERE clause. This means certain advanced scenarios behave unexpectedly.
For example, if you are filtering a General Journal by In Dates on the Posting Date, the system recalculates the worksheet entries based on the underlying transaction table. It does not simply filter the journal lines themselves. This is important because it means your filter scope is limited to whatever entries the worksheet framework is designed to pull. If you need to filter by a date field that the worksheet does not support through In Dates, you will hit a hard wall. There is no workaround inside the standard interface. You have to export to Excel or use a report instead. Another detail that matters is how In Dates interacts with multi-company environments. If you are running a sandbox with multiple company databases, the date filter is scoped to the current company. Switching companies after applying the filter does not adjust it. You need to reapply it. This is not intuitive and catches people off guard regularly.
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Practical Steps to Apply an In Dates Filter
Navigate to the worksheet you want to filter. Open the Filter window. Select In Dates. Enter your From date and To date in the proper format for your localization, typically YYYY-MM-DD or DD-MM-YYYY depending on your regional settings. Choose the date field that matches your use case. Confirm the filter and observe the result. The worksheet should refresh and show only entries matching your criteria. Clearing the filter is just as important. If you do not clear it before closing the worksheet, some versions of NAV retain the filter state across sessions. That is not always a problem, but it becomes one when you come back the next day and wonder why your entries are missing. Go back into the Filter pane and clear the In Dates entry explicitly. One common use case involves closing entries. When you are reconciling a bank statement and need to match transactions from a specific period, In Dates on the Posting Date field lets you isolate that window without manually scrolling through hundreds of entries. Another is when you are investigating discrepancies. If entries seem to appear in the wrong period, filtering by In Dates on both Posting Date and Document Date simultaneously can reveal whether the issue is a date mismatch between the two fields.
You can combine In Dates with other filters in the same worksheet. For instance, you can layer a filter on the Account No. alongside an In Dates filter on the Posting Date. The system handles the combination correctly in most cases. However, there are edge cases where the interaction between filters produces unexpected results, particularly when the worksheet is pulling from multiple underlying tables. I ran into this once with a custom payment journal that joined vendor and customer entries. The In Dates filter on Posting Date seemed to ignore the Document Date contribution entirely, and entries with a valid Posting Date but a document date outside the range still appeared. The workaround was filtering by both date fields separately using the Between operator on the underlying table view instead of relying on the worksheet's In Dates function.
When In Dates Does Not Work for You
The standard In Dates filter in worksheets has real limitations. It only works with the date fields that the worksheet framework exposes. If you need to filter by Created Date, Last Modified Date, or a custom date field you added through customization, the In Dates option is not going to help you. You have to go through the Filter pane with a regular Between filter or build a custom report. Performance is another consideration. On large worksheets with tens of thousands of entries, applying an In Dates filter can take noticeably longer than a simple text or number filter. The system has to requery the underlying entries and re-evaluate each line. I have seen worksheets that took around forty seconds to refresh after applying a date filter on a database with heavy transaction volume. It is not catastrophic, but it is something to plan around if you are running this during a busy close period. If you frequently need complex date filtering on worksheet data, the better long-term approach is to use the Entry list or a custom report. The Entry list gives you full filter control across all available date fields without the worksheet abstraction layer getting in the way. Custom reports let you define exactly which dates matter and can handle combinations that the standard In Dates interface cannot.
Understanding how In Dates Worksheets work in practice saves time. It also prevents the kind of silent data hiding that causes reconcile errors and wrong reports. The feature is useful, it is just not as flexible as people expect. Knowing its boundaries is what separates someone who struggles with NAV worksheets from someone who works through them efficiently.
