Decimals only when required

[Heres Trouble]

Hi All,

I have an ingredient quantity field in my recipe database in which I typed numbers as I wanted to see them, ie all quantities less than 1 were prefixed by "0.", and non-whole quantities above "0" used either 1 or 2 decimal places, for instance "0.25", 0.33, 0.5, 0.75 - this is the easiest on the eye for my application. However, because I've now made the field a calculation field (so I can expand or reduce the number of serves), Filemaker wants to give me 2 decimal places everywhere. Does anyone know how to fix this? Thanks in advance for any help! Helen

[bcooney]

Your ingredient quantity shouldn't be a calc field. You need another calc field, TotalQty = Serves * Ingredient Qty. Right?

Anyway, either use the Round() function to avoid decimal places or use Format>Number in layout mode to only show n decimal places.

[Heres Trouble]

Hi Bcooney and thanks, but you seem to have misunderstood what I require. I might have a recipe that serves four people that I typed as

2 cups flour

1.5 cups basil.

When I decide to cook for two people, I want the quantity field (calculation NumberofServesNew / NumberofServes * IQuantity) to show decimal places only when not zero, and always show leading zero when less than one.

1 cup flour

0.75 cup basil

[comment]

Format the field as decimal. Deselect the 'Fixed number of decimal digits' option.

[Heres Trouble]

Hi 'Comment' and thanks so much, how could I not have tried that! You people on this forum rock.

[Triple]

I have a related problem with a calculation that I am using, but instead of always showing a zero, I want to never show the zero left of the decimal. i.e. I have an average that I want to appear as .420 and not 0.420.

Any suggestions?

Thanks