Display Formats

Search lists in Aspire enable you to specify the fields of information that should be displayed and allow you to control the display format of the information (dollar sign, percent, decimal place, date format, etc.). Display formats can only be specified for numeric and date fields. Generally, Aspire provides an appropriate default format, but you can adjust the format if necessary. This is especially useful for fields created for which Aspire cannot determine the appropriate format.

You can specify display formats by clicking the Displayicon at the top of each search list screen to launch the Display screen:

The string you specify in the Format field determines how values will be formatted when displayed in a search list. Aspire supports two styles that can be used to yield similar results: new and legacy. The legacy format is still supported, but Aspire recommends using the new format – especially for currency and numeric values.

Legacy formatting was provided for numbers based on combinations of the following symbols; “$”, “#”, “.”, “%” and “0”; and for dates with symbols “M” (month), “d” (day), “y” (year), “h” (hours), “m” (minutes), “s” (seconds) and “tt” (am/pm). The new formatting string specifies whether the value should be represented as currency, percent, numeric, date, full date/time, or general date/time (c, p, n, d, F, or g). Here are some common examples of the new and legacy formats.