Hi,I changed column style in advanced format from General to Date/Time and saved the View. When I reopen it, I could see the style as Date/Time. Again I am changing it back to General, save it and re-open it. It shows Date/Time sytle instead of General.
Can anybody help me on this?
Subject: Column Style - Not changing to General from Date/Tim
I’m going to include some screen prints to make sure we are talking the same thing. I’m using 6.5.2 June 01, 2004.
I’ve got a view with a column StartTime. The Style is set as follows:
If I understand you, when you change style to “General,” save and close (as seen here):
When you look at this column’s style property again, it’s set back to Date/Time and not General as you saved it. I can confirm when I did the same thing and got the same results as you:
Reading the links Andre’s links, I believe the statement is… This isn’t used so ignore the fact you cannot change it back to “General”
Subject: RE: Column Style - Not changing to General from Date/Tim
Style is not a property of the column, and there’s no such thing as a view column datatype.
Designer shows you the date/time settings tab for the column because you’ve visited that tab before. However, it doesn’t mean this is a date/time column – there’s no such thing – and it doesn’t affect the behavior of the column. Just ignore it, and you will be fine.
Subject: RE: Column Style - Not changing to General from Date/Tim
I know this. My question was, If change the type and save it in designer and reopen the same in designer, it shows date/time type. But I saved it as General.
Why could n’t we save the view in designer with the type “General” after changed it to Date/Time?
Subject: RE: Column Style - Not changing to General from Date/Tim
You say you know this, but you keep talking about the “type” of the column, which makes me think you do not understand. There is no type of a column. “Style” is not a property that is stored. Designer remembers that you viewed the date/time properties once for that column (the information is stored in the design element), so when you go there again it shows you that information first – even if you never changed anything there. If you also viewed the number properties, Designer would also remember you were there once. This does not make it a date/time column or a number column; the concept does not exist in Designer, only in your head.
If you see a car that’s jammed full of clowns, you might call it a “clown car.” But if you saw the same car with no clowns in it, it’s just a car. Being a clown car is not a property of the car, it’s a property of the contents of the car. Just so, whether a view column is a “date/time column” does not depend on the options selected in the design, but on the data that’s in the documents in that view. That’s not part of the view design.
I could change Designer to forget that you visited the date/time formatting if you don’t change anything there; then it would go back to General next time. But I don’t think that’s actually any less confusing, because people would still write in complaining that their selection doesn’t “stick.” Or, if you changed date/time formatting and then later went to number formatting and changed something, it would still keep showing you date/time formatting first because you have been to more than one of these sections, and we can only show one by default.
Eventually we will probably replace the infobox with an Eclipse properties panel; then will be a good chance for us to make the UI less confusing.