Format : It is meant to indicate as to how the field’s contents are displayed. There are standard types of formats to choose from. Decimal places property : It applies to single, double or decimal types of numbers. Input mask : Formats for data entry that include placeholders and punctuations are called input masks.
It works only for text and date type of fields. It is of particular importance when the accounting codes being used in the system are formatted with hyphens. Caption : It is a label used for the field in datasheet view and on the Forms and reports. If the caption property is set to blank, the field name becomes the default caption and is used to label the field.
Default Value : It is used for specifying a value for new entries of data records. While entering the data item, the operator can always over write the default value. The default value should be the most frequently entered value in the field. Validation Rule and Text : Validation means checking of data to eliminate incorrect entries.
Validation criteria can be specified for this property. If the data so entered does not satisfy the validation criteria, the validation text gets displayed. Required and Indexed : The Required property must be provided a logical value Yes or No . When a field’s required property is set to Yes , a user must enter data in the field before saving the record.
A value of No implies that the data entry in the field is optional. In other words, a null value is also acceptable to the database. Indexing a field results in speeding up sorting, searching and filtering of records on that field. Primary key field is always indexed.
For a single field primary key, Access sets the Required property to Yes and the Indexed property to Yes (No duplicates) because a primary key by definition must have unique values without null entries. Allow-Zero Length : This property is available only for text fields. Setting it to Yes/No determines whether a text string with zero length is a