how to set up telephone format ,eg: ( ) - in a field in access.

[roxy]

Hi everybody,
can any one tell me how to preset the telephone format in a field in access?
I tried to preset the format as ( ) - , so when I tried to input lot of phone number in a table I will just need to punch in the numbers instead of coming back and forth tried to put in the brackets.


Thanks a million.
Roxy

[orange]

You might Google 'input mask telephone numbers'
but you didn't say if this was North America, international.... so formats may vary.
It is best to give readers a simple, plain English description of your requirement if you want a focused response.

Welcome to the forum.

[ssanfu]

In addition to what Orange said, how are you storing the phone number in the table? It should be a text field.
For the text box control on the form, you have the option to use an Input mask (data entry) and/or set the format (how it is DISPLAYED).

The input mask has many predefined formats available, one of which is a US phone number or you can create your own format. You can select if you want to store the phone number with or without the parenthesis and dash. (Personally, I only store the numbers.)

The input mask is nice because you don't need to enter the parenthesis and dash when entering data - they are already there and provides a visual clue on what is required.

If you don't store the parenthesis and dash, you also have the option (under the Format tab) to format the text any way you like for display purposes.

My $0.02....

[roxy]

You might Google 'input mask telephone numbers'
but you didn't say if this was North America, international.... so formats may vary.
It is best to give readers a simple, plain English description of your requirement if you want a focused response.

Welcome to the forum.

Thanks orange and everybody else. I was doing assessment at school yesterday and ran into a database has this function and I clearly remembered that the instructor said you could not preset it when I asked her. then today we learnt how to use input mask to set it up, the instructor said she did not want to tell us when we just started learning Access. OMG!!!
anyway, thank you guys. this is really helpful.