Field Format Specifiers

Field formats can be specified in many places in DTS, e.g. default field formats in the Production Fields section of Project Settings, or column formats in the task tables, numeric formats in the Crosstab view etc. Formats apply to numbers and dates, and each one of these will give you a different selection of formats to choose from.

The example below shows the implementation of production field formats in the task table.

Production fields are defined in the Project Settings form, and the format specified here is considered to be the <Default> format. This means that if you use a production field in a task table and select the <Default> format option, the format specified in Project Settings is used (as shown in the figure above). Alternatively you can select one of the following options (for numeric fields):

Format	Description
<General>	This is equivalent to the <Custom> format G which shows any number with all its significant digits. The number is shown as the more compact of either fixed-point or scientific notation.
31429	This is equivalent to the <Custom> format F which is a fixed-point format without a group separator. You can select the number of decimal places in the Decimals field. Selecting e.g. 2 decimal places would result in the equivalent <Custom> format F2, which is displayed (greyed out) in the Custom Format Text field.
31,429	This is equivalent to the <Custom> format N which is a fixed-point format with a group separator. You can select the number of decimal places in the Decimals field. Selecting e.g. 2 decimal places would result in the equivalent <Custom> format N2, which is displayed (greyed out) in the Custom Format Text field.
<Custom>	This allows you to specify your own custom formats based on the Microsoft .NET formats. A few examples are shown. For details it is suggested you consult the Microsoft .NET online documentation using the following links: Numeric format strings Date and time format strings Examples of numeric formats (use without the quotation marks in DTS): "00000" displays 1234.5678 as 01235 "#.##" displays 0.45678 as .46 "0.00" displays 0.45678 as 0.46 "##,#" displays 2147483647 as 2,147,483,647 "#%" displays 0.3657 as 36.57% "#' tons'" displays 1000 as 1000 tons