How to keep a field hidden until its value is greater than 0.00

[Diane Dennis]

Hi All!

I'm creating a purchase form in Word for Mac, using tables, that will
be used in both Windows and Mac environments.

I have a "total" field that calculates the "Qty" field x "Unit Cost"
field of a line-item and enters the total for that item in the "total"
column. Before I enter any values in the "Qty" or "Unit Cost" fields,
the value of the "total" field for each item is showing $ 0.00.

Is there any way to keep the "total" field "hidden" or "blank" unless
the value is over $ 0.00?

Say you've got 13 items for a purchase order form that has room for 15
items. We don't want the 14th and 15th item "total" fields to show $
0.00, we want them to be blank.

Thank you in advance for your help!!

Have a great day,
Diane Dennis

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word]]

Hi Diane:

We charge a fee for "hard" questions around here! That will be two answers
of other people's questions, please

Yes, there is a way. You can use either numeric picture codes or a Formula
field, depending on what you are doing. A numeric picture field is probably
easier:

You add "\#" after your result field, then three groups that specify
different number formats for a positive result, a negative result, and a 0
(zero) result. For example, depending on the value of the Sales95 bookmark,
{ Sales95 \# "$#,##0.00;($#,##0.00);$0" } displays positive, negative, and 0
(zero) values as follows: $1,245.65, ($ 345.56), $0.

So you would have { Sales95 \# "$#,##0.00;($#,##0.00); " } displays
positive, negative, and 0 (zero) values as follows:

$1,245.65, ($ 345.56), " "

Note the space after the final semicolon.

Or you can surround the whole field with a formula field that does not
perform the sum unless the Qty and Unit Cost fields are non-zero.

Cheers



This responds to article <[email protected]>,

Hi All!

I'm creating a purchase form in Word for Mac, using tables, that will
be used in both Windows and Mac environments.

I have a "total" field that calculates the "Qty" field x "Unit Cost"
field of a line-item and enters the total for that item in the "total"
column. Before I enter any values in the "Qty" or "Unit Cost" fields,
the value of the "total" field for each item is showing $ 0.00.

Is there any way to keep the "total" field "hidden" or "blank" unless
the value is over $ 0.00?

Say you've got 13 items for a purchase order form that has room for 15
items. We don't want the 14th and 15th item "total" fields to show $
0.00, we want them to be blank.

Thank you in advance for your help!!

Have a great day,
Diane Dennis

--

Please respond only to the newsgroup to preserve the thread.

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. GMT + 10 Hrs
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[diane]

Wow John, can you believe I just now found this response! I'm not very
literate with discussion groups yet and have yet to figure out how to
get this system to email me when a response has been posted to my
question(s). I apolgize for taking almost a year to respond...

Thank you for the info, I will try it out. I was wondering, would I
use this same method to hide zero values when using Excel or is it a
different method?

<That will be two answers of other people's questions, please >

I'd love to contribute answers to questions posted here but a person
has to be one of two things... Either 100% confident in their
abilities and understanding of Word OR 100% ignorant of their lack of
ability and understanding of Word. I'm neither...

I'll see if there's any I can answer before I proceed with my current
project. Just please do me a favor and look over my shoulder to
make sure I'm not giving incorrect info or bad advice to someone...

Have a wonderful day and thank you again!
Diane

 

[Beth Rosengard]

Hi Diane,

Mailing lists (list serves) and newsgroups are different animals. For more
on these differences and how newsgroups work, see here:
<http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/AccessNewsgroups.htm>
(If using Safari, hit Refresh once or twice; or use another browser for this
site.)

The only reason you're getting a personal email response to this post is
because I deliberately entered your email address in the CC field.

--
***Please always reply to the newsgroup!***

Beth Rosengard
Mac MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/index.htm>
Entourage Help Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org>

 

[diane]

Thank you Beth!

John, I went looking for some questions I could answer but all I'm
finding are questions from folks who already know way more than I do
about Word... Just wanted to let you know.

Have a great day folks!
Diane

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Mac]]

Hi Diane:

Rubbish, nonsense, excuses, excuses...

Sure, you have to get out of bed early in the morning to beat Beth to the
tasty questions. But it "can" be done.

And no, you do not have to be "confident". You just say "When I got this
situation, this is what *I* did..."

If someone else comes in with a different answer, either you learn
something, or they do

In the early days I posted an answer like that. Everyone jumped all over me
saying the function could be done a lot better/smarter/faster. Except the
original poster: he was a software designer, and he had tried all the other
ways, and they didn't fit his purpose.

Now: I'm not going to answer your follow-on question until I see .... Oh,
awwright...

In Excel, you do this a similar way, but you have more options available.
The "\#" method in Word is technically known as the "Edit Code" method. You
specify codes to say how you want Word to edit numeric values for display.
Excel has a similar mechanism with many more options on the
Format>Cell>Number menu.

The =Formula method is technically an "IF" statement, and you can add these
directly to your cell formula in Excel.

Excel has a third method for simple cases: Tools>Options>View>Zero Values.
Un-Check it to hide values when they are Zero.

The other John is our resident Excel Expert, he will be along in a moment to
suggest the really cunning methods

If you post in through a News Server, as most of us do, there is no way to
get an email saying the thread has updated. You can sue the "Watch Thread"
mechanism in your newsreader to do a similar thing: it pops up a pair of
glasses on any thread you are watching when it updates. In the old days
(pre-Spam. Yes, there was an Internet without spam once....) it was held to
be polite to drop an email copy to the original poster when you replied.
This tradition died when people started using fake email addresses. After a
while we all got sick of being punished with bounced emails for trying to be
helpful and stopped including the drop copy.

If you access these groups through the Microsoft Communities site, the
latest version of the website at
<http://www.microsoft.com/communitie...433-1e47-448a-a430-06c0a75d4a7b&lang=en&cr=US>
has a "Notify me of replies" checkbox at the bottom. If you check that, you
will get an email from Microsoft for each reply.

This feature may not yet be visible on the Mac, depending on which browser
you are using. Microsoft did the latest version of the website entirely in
JavaScript solely so that it *would* work on the Mac (Beth was one of the
noisiest 'encouragers', but there was a fair-sized choir for this
chorus...). However, we are all discovering that one of the problems with
"open" source is that nobody knows quite what will work and what won't

Cheers

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410

 

[Beth Rosengard]

Hi John & Diane,

Unfortunately, John is wrong and the MS Communities route for accessing the
newsgroups is still very buggy on Macs. Personally, I would use Google
before MS's web access even if Google is slower to post.

I still recommend that you switch to a newsreader, Diane.

--
***Please always reply to the newsgroup!***

Beth Rosengard
Mac MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/index.htm>
(If using Safari, hit Refresh once or twice ­ or use another browser.)
Entourage Help Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org>