Sorry Coach, lost track of your post...
Previous() is a function that is referencing exacly the row above a row, it is not in reference to anything else. So your "Previous Month Total" was asking for the value from a field called "month Total" from the previous row of data. That is a non-existent field hence the error you got.
I think I see what you are trying to do here but not being familiar with your data it is very difficult to tease out.
I am assuming you have several if then formulas here that make a 1 or 0 based on your conditions.
You can used shared variable formulas to do conditional adding or subtracting (passing a value to the next row/group) but i think I would do this a little differently (as I prefer Running Totals anyway). This is not answering your question directly because I think the path you are on is going to get too convoluted and I would restart down a different 'cleaner' path...
Create one RT for the Year start
name=yearstartamount
field to summarize=whateer field is your 145 value
type = sum
evaluate=use a formula
onfirstrecord
reset=never
//this gives you one constant value for the entire report
another RT
name=monthlycreated_reset
type=sum
evaluate=for each record
another RT
name=monthlycreated_NO_reset
type=sum
evaluate=for each record
reset=never
another RT
name=monthlyReleased_reset
type=sum
evaluate=for each record
another RT
name=monthlyReleased__NO_reset
type=sum
evaluate=for each record
reset=never
Total Prior to JAN-11 = 145 (show #yearstartamount on first
Jan Created CT = 137 (#monthlycreated_reset)
Jan Released CT = 115 (#monthlyReleased_reset)
Jan Backlog Count = 167 (formula field as:
#yearstartamount on first + #monthlycreated_NO_reset - #monthlyReleased_NO_reset
Edited by DBlank - 04 Oct 2011 at 5:11am