Specify the Choices
To specify the choices from
which users can choose, simply type the choices in the box titled Type
Each Choice on a Separate Line .
Use a line break to separate choices; for example, for a list of
countries, type the countries in the box with a line break between each
country name.
Choose How the Choices Will Be Displayed
The next configuration
setting you can set is how the choices are displayed to the user. The
first two options, Drop-down Menu and Radio Buttons, enable users to
select only one option from the list of choices, whereas the last
option, Checkboxes, allows multiple selections of values.
The Drop-down Menu option is
useful when you have a lot of choices and don’t want to overwhelm
users. The values appear in a drop-down menu, which opens to reveal the
list of choices.
The Radio Buttons option is
useful when the list of choices is small and will not take a lot of
space on the page. The advantage of this option is that the user sees
all the options on the page without having to open a drop-down menu.
The Checkboxes option is useful when you want the users to be able to choose more than one option.
Allow Fill-in Choices
When
you choose to allow fill-in choices, the column enables users to type a
value if the value they are looking for does not exist in the list of
choices you chose (see Figure 15). The values that users type are not added to the list.
Default Value
As with most other column
types, you can type a default value that will be selected when the user
creates a new item. If you want nothing to be selected by default,
clear the Default Value box; otherwise, you need to make sure you type
in the Default Value box the exact text of one of the choices.
Number (1, 1.0, 100)
The Number column type is
useful when you want to capture a numeric value. With this column type,
the user is asked to type a number in a text box. For example, you
might ask for a 1-to-10 rating for a document or the number of products
in stock. Figure 16 shows the settings for this column type.
Minimum and Maximum
With this option, you can configure for a Number column the minimum and maximum numbers that the user can choose in the value.
Number of Decimal Places
In the Number of Decimal
Places option, you configure how many decimal places the value can
have. If you choose the value 0, fractions of numbers are not allowed;
only integers are allowed. Choosing the value 1 enables users to
specify numbers with one decimal place, such as 15.4. Choosing the
value 2 allows a precision of two decimal places, and so on up to five
decimal places. The default option for this setting is Automatic, which
displays how many decimal points are in the entered number.
Show as Percentage
Choosing the Show as Percentage option causes the value entered in this column to be displayed as a percentage.
Default Value
Like other columns, this
column supports a default value that you can enter as a static default
value or as a calculated value. This column supports many mathematical
formulas using standard arithmetic operators (such as +, −, *, and /)
to perform calculations. For example, you can have a calculated default
value of =128+10, which results in a default value of 138. Another
option is to use special functions in the calculation. Number columns
support such functions as Pi(), which returns the number for pi; AVERAGE(), which returns the average of the numbers you give it; and MAX, which returns the biggest number in the list of numbers you give it.
Note
As you can see,
having calculated defaults for the Number column is not extremely
useful; essentially, you are typing in a static number. However, these
formulas do work in this column type, and you might find a use for
them. To take full advantage of these formulas, see the “Calculated (Calculation Based on Other Columns)” section, later in this chapter. For more information about the types of formulas and how to use them, see http://tinyurl.com/SPcalculated2010.
Currency ($, ¥, e)
The Currency column type is
almost exactly the same as the Number column type. The only option that
is different in the Currency column type from the Number column type is
Currency Format. This option determines what symbol will be used next
to the value when displaying the value in the item’s or file’s
properties. For example, choosing United States displays values with
the dollar sign ($) next to the value, while choosing one of the
European currencies displays the euro sign ($) next to the value.
Date and Time
The
Date and Time column type lets users specify a date or a date and time
as the value for the column. For example, in a calendar list, users can
specify the start date and time of a meeting. However, for a list of
contacts, if you want a column with the birth date of a contact, for
example, you need to configure the column to ask only for the date, not
for the time. Figure 17 shows the two modes for this column.
Figure 18 shows the configuration options for this column type.
