Since I rarely get any answers by asking MS, I thought I’d try here first.
I just noticed something funny in MS Works Database version 8.5. The word “true” will not sort properly nor will it line up with the other words unless I go into Format and set the alignment. It also appears in the cell in all caps after I hit Enter, even if I type it in in lowercase.
Is this a known bug or what? Thanks.
You’re talking about the spreadsheet, I presume? IIRC, MS works likes to autoformat cells based on things you’re likely to use them for. Money figures get commas and dollar signs, dates get slashes, etc. TRUE/FALSE is one of the categories, and gets autoformatted.
I would presume the solution is to select ‘True’ in the top text bar, and put quotation marks around. That way, it would remain as text, and not as a true/false integer.
I think. I haven’t used spreadsheets in eons.
EDIT: You put the opening quotation mark. Not the closing one, though.
No, it’s the database, but I don’t usually enter quote marks for the words and forgot to try that. Using the leading quote took care of it. Thanks.
True is a reserved word; you can format the cells as text first or use the leading quote.
Yes, even MS Works is not immune to the Microsoft curse of “we’re going to tell you what number/text format that cell is in.” At least TRUE is a boolean operator which MS translates to a 1, which makes it easy to add a ’ to let the program know it’s supposed to be text. I recently had an agonizing problem with Excel where the program insisted that the last name of “May” was actually in date/time format, and put it first in any alphabetized list.