When you add a numeric type field to QuickBase, you probably have a very specific job in mind for that field. For example, maybe it holds a price or contains a rating. To help the field be most effective, QuickBase lets you control its display and behavior.
Note: Numeric fields take only numbers. Try to enter a letter or other character and QuickBase won't stand for it. You'll get a message telling you where you went wrong and the numeric field will be blank - waiting for you to do right and type a number in it.
When you add a new field, QuickBase offers a few different types of numeric fields as options:
Numeric. A plain-vanilla numeric field holds basic numbers—the kind your started on as soon as you could hold up a finger or two to tell folks how old you are. But you've taken a lot of math classes since then. So, QuickBase lets you ratchet it up a notch by displaying decimals if need be and offering different options for totals and calculations that you'll read about in a minute.
Currency. Inputting prices? Any time you want to record a monetary amount, you'll use a Numeric - Currency type field. (Read how to format currency symbols.)
Percent. If you need to measure portions (for example, what amount of a salesperson's monthly goal did they actually meet?) you'll want to use a percentage field.
FAQ
- I'm using a percentage field in my formula, and it's not working.
Why not?
While values in this type of field display as percentages, the
real value is the exact mathematical
representation of percent, which is always a portion of the whole
number, one. For example, 20% is really.2 and
3% is really the number .03. This is an important
concept to understand if you plan to use a Numeric - Percent field
in a QuickBase formula. Say you created a formula to color-code
records where the percent complete is less than 100% you'd need
to use the number 1 instead of the number 100.
This formula should look like this: If([percent
complete]< 1, "pink", ""). (Read
more about formulas
and row colorization.)
Rating. Using QuickBase to assess product ideas or review movies? If so, check out the Numeric - Rating feature. This field type lets users give an item one to five stars. the beauty part is--they actually display as stars (unless you tell QuickBase otherwise).
Each type of numeric field has its own particular talent, but they're not as different as they first appear. In the list of field types QuickBase offers, these all look like their own separate types. But believe it or not, these types are all one single type - Numeric. You can change the properties of any numeric field to show values in one of the formats listed above. In other words, Currency is not its own field type, but rather an attribute of a numeric field that tells the field how to display and behave. What does this mean? Well, it means that you could change ratings into actual numeric values in a snap. You do it all on the field's Properties page.
You can easily display a numeric field in a different kind of numeric format. To do so:
Open the field's properties page.
Access this page in one of the following ways:
If you're in a form, right-click the field label and select Edit this field's properties.
If you're in a report, left-click the column heading and select Edit this field's properties
In the table bar on any application page, click the table containing the field you want to change. Within the menu that appears, select Customize --tablename-- table > Fields.
In the menu bar on any application page, select Customize > Tables. Within the list on the left side of the page, click the table that contains the field you want to change and click the Fields tab.
Change the attributes of the field.
Within the Numeric Options sections, go to the Treat
As option and select the desired numeric format.
Click Save.
Tell QuickBase how to wrap up the numbers when the numeric field appears in a table. The program either totals or averages all the numbers. The result appears at the bottom of the column. Usually, you'll want to total regular numbers and monetary amounts. Most application managers choose to average percentages and ratings. To set this, open the field's properties page (see Step 1 above) and turn on either the Totals or Averages checkbox.
You may wish to offer specific choices to your users in a dropdown list, instead of letting them enter anything they want. This might be a nice feature of a rating field, for instance. To do so, locate the Data Entry option of the field's Properties screen and click the Multiple-Choice radio button. In the box that displays, type in the options you want to offer, like the numbers 1 through 5 for example.
Zip codes contain numbers. So, you might think that you should use a numeric
field to contain these values. Wrong. In this case, you're better off
using a Text type field. Why? Often zip codes start with
a zero. If the field is a numeric field, QuickBase automatically
removes the preceding zero. This holds true for any long numeric chain
that identifies things like account numbers or inventory codes. If a chain
of numbers is very long, QuickBase attempts to round the number off. Use
a text field to avoid this problem.
If your numeric field's not already in currency format, go to the Treat As section on the field properties page and select Currency. If you want, you can enter a different currency symbol to display and specify its placement:
Select Left side if you want the currency symbol to display on the left side of the value. For example: $-34.95
Select Between sign and number if you want the currency symbol to display between the minus sign and the numerical value. For example: -$34.95
Select Right side if you want the currency symbol to display on the right side of the value. For example: 34.95$
The default currency symbol is the dollar sign ($). If you run a cosmopolitan business and need to show a different symbol, you can enter the currency symbol as either an HTML character entity or as a Unicode character code. For example, to display a pound sign (£), you would enter one of the following in the Symbol box:
£ (HTML character entity)
0163 while holding down the ALT key (Unicode character code)
View a list of character entities on the W3C web site.
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