Number values are one of the types of Field values.

When you configure a field to have a number value, Dabble will only allow the field to contain a number, and will warn you if a field does not contain a valid number.

You can change a field to have a number value using the Field configuration. When you do this, existing data in the field will be converted. Letters, words or any other non-numeric text will be stripped out. If a field contains some text and Dabble cannot find a number in it, it will warn the user that the field contains Invalid data. When you enter new data into a number field, the same behavior will apply.

Although you can put numbers into text value fields, Dabble will treat them as plain text and therefore offer no special functionality. When you change a field to number values, you can then use mathematical calculations to analyze your data.

The two main types of calculations you can do are:

• Subtotals: to calculate the sum or average of a column of numbers in a Table view or Compact view

• Formulas: to perform arithmetic (add/subtract/multiply/divide) on two columns in a Table view or Compact view

Another advantage of using number values is that you can filter data using the mathematical operators “greater than”, “less than”, “greater than or equal to” and “less than or equal to”. These are written in shorthand using >, <, >= or ⇐. You can also use = for simply “equal to”.

Find out more about adding filters.

There are several options you can change for number value fields in the Field configuration.

If this box is checked, Dabble will recognize negative values with a ”-” character before the number. If this box is unchecked and field contains a negative number, Dabble will warn the user that the field contains invalid data and the value will be ignored.

By default, numeric values will be integers unless a decimal point is specified. If this box is checked, then Dabble will display every number in this field with the specified number of decimal places.

When this option is enabled and there is a mismatch between the data entered and the option chosen, Dabble follows one of these paths:

1. If a number is entered with no decimal point, Dabble adds one and the appropriate number of trailing zeroes.
2. If a number is entered with a decimal point but fewer than the specified decimal places, trailing zeroes will be added.
3. If a number is entered with a decimal point and more than the specified number of decimal places, the extra decimal places will be maintained in the entry itself. However, Dabble will round off the extra decimal places whenever the field is shown in a view or any calculation is performed.

You can specify a default value for when new entries are created with this field. This only applies to the future: existing entries will not have their values changed.