Database Notes (Part 2)

Field format

This property is used to personalize the way in which data is presented on the screen or in a report.
This can be established in all types of data except the OLE object and Autonumerical.

For Numeric and Currency fields the options are:

General number: presents numbers in the same way as they have been introduced.

Currency: presents the values introduced with a thousandth separator and the assigned monetary symbol in Windows e.g. $

Euro: uses the currency format, with the euro symbol.

Fixed: presents the values without the thousandth separator.

Standard: presents the values with the thousandth separator.

Percent: multiplies the value by 100 and adds the percent sign (%).

Scientific: presents the number with scientific notation.

Date/Time fields have the following formats:

General date: if the value is only a date no time is shown; if the value is only a time no date is
shown. This value is a combination of the Short date and Long time values. E.g. '3/4/93', '05:34:00 PM' and '3/4/93 05:34:00 PM'.

Long date: the date is seen together with the day of the week and the month in full. E.g. Monday, August 21, 2000.

Medium date: presents the month with the first 3 letters. E.g. 21-Aug-2000.

Short date: the date is presented with 2 digits for the day and month. E.g. 01/08/00 or 01/08/2000. The Short date format assumes that dates between 1/1/00 and the 31/12/29 are dates between the years 2000 and 2029, and that the dates between 1/1/30 and the 31/12/99 are for the years 1930 to 1999.

Long time: presents the time in normal format. E.g. 05:35:20 PM

Medium time: presents the time in PM or AM format. E.g 5:35 PM

Short time: presents the time without seconds neither PM. E.g 17:35.

Yes/No fields have predefined Yes/No, True/False, and On/Off formats available.
Yes, True and ON are the equivalents of yes, as are No, False, Off of no.

Note: The default control for Yes/No data is the verification box as we seen in Datasheet the data of this type appears in a verification box and does not affect the format property. If we choose to see the effect we need to change the default control in the Lookup tab in the field properties, in the Display control property select Text box as we will show you next.

The Text and Memo fields do not have predefined formats available, for the Text fields we will need to create your own custom formats.