>Hi, I was looking for a solution to this:
>We have a date field that if it contains a date, it means the item is closed.
>If it is blank, it means still pending.
>Now a new status is that it will be neither of these so a mgr wants all zeros to denote this. But it won't accept this, so what could be input to denote a 3rd status?

Why not use status field?

Otherwise you can either use NULL or some arbitrary date.