ALTER TABLE does not set field "format"

[GraeagleBill]

The following statement executes okay, but the "field format" does not get set to yes/no even though the table design view shows the field data type as in fact being yes/no. With that, when the table is viewed, the field displays as zero (0) as opposed to a check-box. My intent is to create a check-box with the initial value of false.



What am I missing here?

strDDL = "ALTER TABLE Families ADD Column FamilyDirSC YESNO False"

Thanks,
Bill

[JoeM]

Where does this table reside?
Is it a native Access table, or a SQL table?
If an Access table, why are you adding it like that with code as opposed to editing the data directly in Access?

In any event, you shouldn't really about wanting to display it as a check box in the Table view, because people should not be accessing/viewing/editing your tables directly. You usually want everything to be Form driven. On the Form, you can add a check box field, and use this field as the Control Source.

[GraeagleBill]

The back-end mdb's are application version sensitive. If I release a new version of the app and the new version includes an added field to the DB, there's initialization code that senses the version of the DB and updates table defs accordingly.

I think my question arises more from what I'm used to seeing as a developer, namely when in Table view I see a check-box rather than "Yes" or "No" displayed. And yes, when I use the new field value as the control source of a check-box on a form, it in fact behaves as expected.

[JoeM]

Yes, in linked databases (where the tables are elsewhere and linked in), it seems that you have limited options in the format of the fields. But it really shouldn't matter, as we discussed. What you are seeing is actually how Access stores the data in the tables. The formatting just changes how it is presented to you, but has no impact on the actual stored value.

[GraeagleBill]

The initialization code has been around forever and has done version updates in the field for several years. I would have been willing to bet a lunch that in the past when linked tables were updated via that code that YES/NO fields were formatted as check-boxes when viewed in Table view..........oh well, no harm no foul. Thanks for your thoughts.

[JoeM]

There may be a way, but I haven't found it yet!
Then again, I never spent much time on it as I was never overly concerned about it.