More recent versions of FM brought in better text handling with regard to presentation - specifically font and size management with functions.

However number formatting has not had the same treatment.

Yes, you can format numbers for layouts but these formats are fixed and what is needed is a way to FormatNumberAs() to permit variable formatting. For example, currency pre-fix symbol, how many decimals... in fact all the number formatting features from the standard dialog box.

No doubt these are achievable using custom functions - but you need FMP advanced for that.

I'm all for making our application of choice better, but I'm not understanding how your calculation would work, or how it would be different from the display options available for the numbers now.

By example...

The display options for numbers offer a currency symbol - however the choice of currency symbol is then fixed. Equally so, the number of decimals etc. What I'm looking for is the replication of the number display options, but to be calculated as needed - based on parameters that could be supplied to the FormatNumberAs(function).

There's a nice custom function here although it stops short of a full set of options, but as I said custom functions are the domain FMP Advanced so something much more "native" to FMP would be better.

The new Text functions do for text what FormatNumberAs would do for numbers.

Hi Mark,

Actually a custom function isn't necessary - Comment has provided a nice number formatting calculation here .

However, I totally agree with you. It would provide same functionality we now are given from number format (at the layout level). Heck, FMI already knows how they re-display the data; they just haven't given US that ability natively.

Even Alpha 5 has built-in number formatting calculations (check out Alpha 5 number calculations for a long list of them) and it is another example of where FileMaker is years behind in providing us with the proper tools that other programs have made available already.

How about better field formating in genreal. I would love to be able to display a formated phone number while storing only a ten digit string in a field without having to use a Calc field. (simple thing that most database and speadsheet software has been able to do for 10yrs or more)