entering number versus text.

I am new to access and am trying to duplicate a program that was not
2000K compliant. The first problem I have encountered is: four
fields i.e. 041-04-291-001 I would like these four fields to be
numbers yet find that the number “0” will not show up if I enter it
as a number but will if I enter as text. I’m sure this is relatively
simple to many but not to the beginner – any help would be
appreciated.

in Access, the rule of thumb is that you store a value as a number when
you're going to use it to perform mathematical calculations, otherwise, you
store it as text. personally, i often break that rule for the sake of
convenience and under specific conditions, but rarely when i need to include
leading zeros in my values.

however, if you really want to store the values as number data type, you can
format the field to show leading zeros, as

Format(MyNumberField, "000")

however, keep in mind that formatting only affects the display of the data,
NOT what value is actually stored.

hth


"DONNAK" wrote in
message ...
I am new to access and am trying to duplicate a program that was not
2000K compliant. The first problem I have encountered is: four
fields i.e. 041-04-291-001 I would like these four fields to be
numbers yet find that the number “0” will not show up if I enter it
as a number but will if I enter as text. I’m sure this is relatively
simple to many but not to the beginner – any help would be
appreciated.