Set a number field with decimal places.

[FL]

I need to change a number field to accept 2 decimal places. However, my
existing field is a number field with data type Long Integer. Do I need to
change this to single type field with a currency or fixed format? Or, some
other data type field? The number is not currency but MS help suggests
currency for decimal places. Not sure why. I need to display and store a
number like 50.25 or 1.75 That's it. No dollar signs. Any
suggestions? Thanks!

 

[Jeff Boyce]

Change the LongInt field to Currency. That data type will store up to 4
decimal places, and will only show the $ if you set the format also to
Currency.

If you used the Single or Double data type, you could get rounding errors
(1.0 + 1.0 = 1.9999999999!) when you do math on the values. If you use
Currency (with no more than 4 places), no storage/rounding errors.

Regards

Jeff Boyce
Microsoft Office/Access MVP

 

[Jamie Collins]

Setting Description Decimal precision Storage size

Decimal
Stores numbers from -10^28-1 through 10^28-1 (.mdb) 28 12bytes

Long Integer (Default) Stores numbers from -2,147,483,648 to
2,147,483,647 (no fractions). None 4 bytes

Default for what? e.g.

SELECT TYPENAME(0.1)
FROM AnyTableHere;

returns 'Decimal' because the DECIMAL type is Jet's native type for
'decimal' values (i.e. where the decimal portion is non-zero and the
scale/precision is within the limits for the DECIMAL type), surely a
candidate for consideration of the 'default' type for decimal numeric
values?

Jamie.

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