Text in a numeric field

[VeryGreen]

I am a new user and I am struggling. I have a field that I have designateed
as numeric. It contains room numbers. The room number are four digits, a .,
then 2, 3 or four more digits and can also contain an alpha character at the
end.

I don't seem to be able to figure out how to put all of this variable
information into a text field.

Any ideas?

 

[Jerry Whittle]

All that data should fit into a text field but not a number field. The
location of the period and alpha character would prevent this from fitting
into a number field.

Do the room numbers have some kind of meaning? For example is the first 4
characters the building number or something similar? Does the alpha character
mean that there are multiple room number or is it for something like a closet
in the room? If so you may want to split up the data into three fields like:
Building, Room, SubRoom.

 

[LurfysMa]

I am a new user and I am struggling. I have a field that I have designateed
as numeric. It contains room numbers. The room number are four digits, a .,
then 2, 3 or four more digits and can also contain an alpha character at the
end.

I don't seem to be able to figure out how to put all of this variable
information into a text field.

Any ideas?

Numeric fields can only contain numeric data. If your data is not a
valid number, then you will need to convert it to a number or put it
in a text field.

If the format of the room numbers is "nnnn.nnnx" where the n's are
digits and the x is alpha, then this is not a number and cannot go in
a numeric field. You could change the field type to Text, but then you
cannot do arithmetic without converting it to a number.

Perhaps if you say a little more about why you wanted it to be
numeric... Do you need to do calculations or numeric sorts?

 

[George Nicholson]

I have a field that I have designateed as numeric.... can also contain an

alpha character at the
end.

then your data is not numeric, it is alpha-numeric, aka Text.

If you aren't going to do math with it (add, subtract, multiply, etc.),
treat it as text: room numbers, phone numbers, credit card numbers, Social
security numbers, zip codes, product numbers, anything with leading zeros,
etc.).