User manual

Chapter 3 | Designing and creating solutions 76
Formatting field data on a layout
Use FileMaker Pro field formats to control how text, numeric, date, time, and timestamp data
appears on a layout, how results are displayed in calculation and summary fields, and how images
and file icons are displayed in container fields. The formats you specify don’t change the data as
it’s stored in the database, and you can specify different formats each time you place a field on a
layout (whether it’s on the same layout or a different layout). For example, if you enter
–5123 into
a number field, you can format it in one place to display as –$5,123.00 and in another place as
<5123>.
To specify formats for text, see the next section. To specify formats for number, date, time,
timestamp, and container fields, see Help.
Specifying text formats for fields
You can specify a set of text character attributes for each field. All the characters in that instance
of the field (including all repetitions of repeating fields) share the same font, size, style, color, line
spacing, tab, and paragraph settings.
You can also format characters in text fields in Browse mode (for example, italicize or underline a
word for emphasis). Unlike text formatting specified in Layout mode, this formatting is stored with
the data, and you see it in any layout that displays that field.