Column Format

Column Format
The Column Format dialog box, available by selecting Column Format from the Edit menu, is used to set specific information for a selected column. The Insert Column dialog box contains nearly identical information, as described below.

Title: Enter a unique title for the column, up to 40 characters.

Type: Choose one of the four types of columns:

Character columns can hold any kind of text, including numbers. Entries in these columns will be right justified.

Numeric columns can hold numbers only. Entries in these columns will be left justified.

Note: If you choose to store your data in dBase III files (.dbf) rather than the qdb data file format, then you should NOT use a numeric column type if there is a possibility of missing data. In dBase III files, you can represent missing data in a character-type column by leaving a cell blank (as you might expect); but in a numeric-type column a blank cell will be interpreted as the value zero.
Date columns can hold dates such as "12/10/90" (The format of the entry is determined by the Language version). The width of the column is set to eight.

Notes on Date Interpretation:

Years from 00 to and including 35 are interpreted as 20xx,

Years from 36 to and including 69 (i.e. Dates before 1970 and after 2035) cannot be handled properly by the "run time libraries" (Microsoft's 32-bit and Borland's 16-bit libraries) that the program is built on and hence are formally identified as "invalid" values.

Years from 71 to an including 99 are interpreted as 19xx.

In summary the program can now handle dates properly that are in the range January 1, 1970 to December 31, 2035.
This interpretation satisfies Year 2000 Compliance Requirements. A copy of the Year 2000 Compliance Statement is available from tech@qualityamerica.com

Time columns can hold times such as "12:58" and "09:43:12". The width of the column must be set to either five (hours:minutes) or eight (hours:minutes:seconds).

Width: Enter the number of characters to display in the column. The width must be large enough to contain the data values that will be stored in the column, as data will be truncated if it is too small. The column title will not be truncated if a smaller width is used, but may not be fully displayed.

Decimal Places: Enter the number of decimal places to be used with Numeric data in this column, from 0 to 9 decimals. This value does not affect the calculations, except in truncating the data to this number of decimals.
Subgroup Size: Enter the subgroup size from 1 to 32000.
Analysis / Chart Format Options: Select this option to perform analysis on the information in this column. This option is pre-selected if the Columns have analysis and chart format options by default option is set in the Preferences dialog box, available from the Options menu.

Insert After current column: (available for Insert Column dialog box only) Select this option to place the new column to the right of the column currently selected by the cursor.