In an Excel 2007 database what do the little green triangles at the top left of a cell mean? Why does it change in some cells when I save changes to a database? It seems to be only on numeric fields but not on telephone numbers> Nancy

Nancy Was pondering this, and even though I recalled seeing it, couldn't remember what it was, when I just went to update a file of my own and put in a zipcode that insisted on being 5253 instead of 05253. So, I changed the format to text. The little green arrow came up. If you click on the cell, a small box with a caution symbol comes up. Clicking on that notes a way to change the format, and the information that and the box that you have a number stored as text. Which, if you are not planning on adding up any numbers, is exactly what you want. Otherwise you get anomalies as dropped 0's or decimal points and such. If I were you, I'd format the phone numbers as "special" "Phone number." And, while I'm at it, I'm changing the zip codes to "special" "zip code" <G> You can tell Excel to "ignore" the perceived error or storing a number as text. One question is, when you "save changes to a database" how does the cell behave? I presume you are saving to Access? Does the "error" produce any problems? Pat -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Nancy Sent: Friday, March 15, 2013 9:02 AM To: Gen-Newbie Rootsweb Subject: [GN] MS Excel database Question In an Excel 2007 database what do the little green triangles at the top left of a cell mean? Why does it change in some cells when I save changes to a database? It seems to be only on numeric fields but not on telephone numbers> Nancy ******************** Gen-Newbie's website: http://www.rootsweb.com/~newbie/ ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message