Masked fields for display only

[cboullear]

Help!

I've been around and around with the documentation and field rules screen trying to figure out how to insert dashes into the DISPLAY of a field, not into the actual field. Example:

Field is 11 character field:

12345123412

I want to DISPLAY it on the screen as:

12345-1234-12

I do NOT want to make it a 13 char field as I much match to another DBF carrying it as 11 char field.

Every time I've tried this, the dashes have been kept in the field and the last two digits of the part # have been truncated! (I've been checking "Do not store literals as part of field box" and then unchecking it. Can't find a comination that works.)

Any help is appreciated....

Chris

[Vince McGinnis]

RE: Masked fields for display only

Chris,

You could define a Global Calculated Field, which you could use in both your forms and reports.

It would be something like Left(Yourfield,5)+"-"+Substr(Yourfield,6,4)+"-"+Right(Yourfield,2)

[cboullear]

RE: Masked fields for display only

Thanks, but is there anything simpler? In Access I could just use a mask like:

00000-0000-00

and it would work.

Chris

[Vince McGinnis]

RE: Masked fields for display only

I quess I did miss the obvious.

You should be able to do what you want using field rules.

Did you read User Guide, page 112, under Masks, "Specifying That Mask Literal Characters Are Not Stored".

You should be able to specify a mask without actually storing the extra characters.

[Vince McGinnis]

RE: Masked fields for display only

Chris,

Just tested this mask in field rules and it works fine.

Though you don't have to change the structure of your table to accomodate the extra characters, if you display your field on a form or report, you will need to adjust the size of the form/report field properties so you can see the entire field.

Hope that makes sense.

[cboullear]

RE: Masked fields for display only

Thanks for your help, but I must be brain dead or something. I have tried setting up field rules several times, and and all resulted in the last two characters of my field being truncated. I am using:

Simple Mask: 00000-0000-00 "do not store mask literals in field" IS checked.

What am I doing wrong????

Chris

[Tom Cone Jr]

RE: Masked fields for display only

Chris, that's not a fair question.

Try telling us exactly what you are doing, and we can tell you what looks wrong to us. I'll try to whip up a simple example for you this evening. Perhaps by comparing yours to mine, you will be able to see the differences.

-- tom

[cboullear]

RE: Masked fields for display only

I have a little test database with 5 fields, each 11 char long and filled with the string "12345123412".

I went to field rules and defined as stated above:

Simple Mask
Mask reads: 00000-0000-00
I DID check the box "do not store mask literals in field"

When I save the field rule and look back at the data (and yes, I did widen the field on the screen to make sure I was seeing the whole thing), this is what I see:

12345-1234-

It looks to me like it DID store the literals and truncated the right two characters.

Is there another way to look at the data? I just widened the field to provide plenty of space and the last two char are not visible.

I tried opening just the little test DBF file with A5 and it said "unexpected file format"????
Chris

[Tom Cone Jr]

RE: Masked fields for display only

Chris, the field object used to display your field in the form must be increased. It defaults to the width in your table (11). When the mask inserts two new characters (the hyphens) the new string (which is now 13 chars long) won't fit. Open form in design mode, and adjust the display width property of the field object. You'll find it on the format tab page I believe.

I verified that the field rule is working as expected just now. Here's a summary of my own findings. Perhaps you'll find it useful.

Used this mask for Character type field:

00000-0000-00
Checked box so that mask literals would NOT be stored in field

Got these results when entering field value:
12345123412

Structure	Value stored   			Value displayed
Field Width	in field			on form or browse
11		"12345123412"			12345-1234-12 (Note1)


13		"12345123412  "	(Note2)		12345-1234-12


Once this field rule is defined, it's difficult to verify what
value is stored in the field, because the mask is used to
insert hyphens each time the field is displayed on a form
or in a browse.  Actual values stored in the field were 
determined using third party tools (Excel and WordPerfect).

Note1:  To display the complete value, the display field or column
must be increased to 13, even though the field width in the table
is only 11.

Note2:  Left justified, with two blank spaces trailing the 11
character string of numbers.

--tom

[Ohlen Cartmell]

RE: Masked fields for display only

Tom,
I am unable to duplicate your results here. In fact, I get the same thing as Chris. If I create an 11 character field and define a mask as 0000-00-00000 and then set the field width on the form to 13, I can get only 1234-56-789 on the form.

[cboullear]

RE: Masked fields for display only

Maybe what I'm not "getting" is what you termed "Structure Field Width".

In browse mode I just opened the field to a wider column by dragging the column wider.

In Form mode I widened the field contents box to way wider than would be necessary to see all characters.

In both instances, date looked truncated.

Is there some other place that I need to set the "Structure Field Width" to 13?

I did open up the DBF file in Excel and still see the full 11 characters as you did. The problem must be in how the display is set, yet dragging the field to a wider width is my normal way in Access of seeing the wider contents. Is there another way to do this in A5?

Chris

[Tom Cone Jr]

RE: Masked fields for display only

Chris and Ohlen,

The display in the browse layout shows only the first 11 chars of the string. I cannot get it to show the full 13 (11 in table structure, plus 2 more added in field rules.)

However, if you guys will play with the default form for the table (instead of the browse) you can get the desired result if you do two things:

a) stretch the field object wide enough to show all 13 chars; and

b) as I indicated before, visit the field object in design mode and set its display width to 13.

Both are required. This is how it works in Vers 4 also. Simply grabbing an edge of the field object on the form and dragging it wider is not enough. The display width (format) of the field object must be adjusted, too.

-- tom cone

[Tom Cone Jr]

RE: Masked fields for display only

Chris, I don't recall a lot of message traffic on this mask issue. My assumption has always been that just about everyone wants the mask characters stored in the field, they just don't want the operator to have to key them in. If my assumption is right, then your desire to strip the mask characters out for storage purposes, and then put them back in for display purposes, is in the distinct minority. I've always felt that your approach was more trouble than it's worth. Even if I have share the data with other programs it's easier to write a script which removes the hyphens than to never know whether or not what you see on the screen is actually what's in the table.

-- tom

[Tom Cone Jr]

RE: Masked fields for display only

Chris & Ohlen,

I owe you both an apology.

Turns out my form works well only because I entered the 11 digit number while the mask was turned off. when I turned it back on the form behaves correctly, as I described. Otherwise, the form won't let you enter more than 11 digits, including the mask chars, if the table field width is only 11... even if the display width of the field object on the form is set to 13.

Hadn't run into this before the reasons outlined above. Most store the literals in the field.

simple solution here is to change table structure to increase the stored field width to 13. Costs you two blank spaces at the end of each 11 digit field, but these can always be trimmed off.

My own strong preference would be to store the mask literals with the data.

If time permits I'll see if this is behaving differently in vers 5 than in vers 4.

-- tom

[Tom Cone Jr]

RE: Masked fields for display only

Chris, Ohlen,

this same behavior seems to have been present in vers 4, also. Check this link in the vers 4 forum:

http://msgboard.alphasoftware.com/alphaphorum/read.php3?sortby=lastreply&direction=desc&num=4&id=4053&thread=4053

-- tom