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I am sure this problem did not happen in earlier access version which is why I am aware of it now. Is there a way round it please?
In queries, or tables I make from them which have number fields that I have calculated access now wants to display them with a huge number of decimal places or not at all.
If the column width is not wide enough to show all these decimal places what I see is ######## and I have to widen the column on screen to see what the number actually is.
What I want to happen is for the number to be viewed as far as possible.
So if the number is 22.7953808752026 I am happy to see 22.79538 if the column is only wide enough to see the first 8 characters, but instead what I see is ########.
Or I want it to display 22.8 (ideally) if column only wide enough for 4 digits - but I would even be happy if truncation to 22.7 happened, what I don't want is ####.
Obviously if the number was larger than display width to left of decimal point the ### would be only option e.g. 1234567890 could not be displayed if only enough display width for 4 digits so then #### is appropriate, but for numbers to right of decimal point they are not critical to meaning of the number so they can be cut out of the display when there is not room.they are not critical to meaning of the number so they can be cut out of the display when there is not room.
I have not found a standard formatting method that does this for me - but even then I don't really want to go into every field and every table in every database to give a format, I just want a common sense view of as much of the number as possible if the digits that will not be viewed are to the right of the decimal point to be the default for number display.
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Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
If you're NOT going to be using this calculated field in a further calculation, you could just change the calculation from
(Z+W)/Y
to
Round((Z+W)/Y, 1)
to round it to one decimal place (or of course any desired number of decimals).
This would not be a good idea if you WILL be doing further calculations, as you would lose precision.
I would still like to know if there is a solution to this - i.e. is it possible to prevent ##### when viewing a decimal number calculated field in a query when the number would not be too big to display if the decimal places displayed were reduced.
e.g.
if the number is 22.7953808752026 the display could show 22.79538 if the column is only wide enough to see the first 8 characters, but I see ########.
Or could display 22.8 if column only wide enough for 4 digits but I see ####.
...............but even then I don't really want to go into every field and every table in every database to give a format
Why would you need to do that? As data should only be exposed to users via forms or reports, never in raw datasheet view, what shows in raw datasheet view is irrelevant. Formatting should be done in the forms or reports as appropriate to their context within the application.
I would want to do that because my work is statistical/ analysing and manipulating large datasets to produce various projections. I am not trying to produce the nice end product but viewing the results of queries along the way. So these are stages of work starting off with raw data and end up with particular projections. It is convenient if I can view the data as I want to view it without having to make the columns so wide that I cannot print it all on one page when I am checking through the work. My point was, I am sure I used to be able to do that, i.e as I reduced, or expanded the width of a column I would see less or more decimal places.
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Any field defined as Single, Double, Currency or any other sub datatype that accepts a decimal, will have a decimal places property. You can set that property to the max amount of decimal places you want to see.
...............but even then I don't really want to go into every field and every table in every database to give a format
Why would you need to do that? As data should only be exposed to users via forms or reports, never in raw datasheet view, what shows in raw datasheet view is irrelevant. Formatting should be done in the forms or reports as appropriate to their context within the application.