Visual Basic 2008 Tutorial

Lesson 15: Functions Part IV- Formatting Functions

 

The Format function is a very powerful formatting function which can display the numeric values in various forms. There are two types of Format functions, one of them is the built-in or predefined format while another one can be defined by the users.

(i) The format of the predefined Format function is

Format (n, “style argument”)

where n is a number and the list of style arguments is given in Table 15.1.

Table 15.1 List of style arguments Style argument Explanation Example General Number To display the number without having separators between thousands.   Format(8972.234, “General Number”)=8972.234 Fixed To display the number without having separators between thousands and rounds it up to two decimal places.   Format(8972.2, “Fixed”)=8972.23 Standard To display the number with separators or separators between thousands and rounds it up to two decimal places.   Format(6648972.265, “Standard”)= 6,648,972.27 Currency To display the number with the dollar sign in front, has separators between thousands as well as rounding it up to two decimal places.   Format(6648972.265, “Currency”)= $6,648,972.27 Percent Converts the number to the percentage form and displays a % sign and rounds it up to two decimal places.   Format(0.56324, “Percent”)=56.32 %

Example 15.1

Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click, Button5.Click, Button4.Click, Button3.Click
Label1.Text = Format(8972.234, "General Number")
Label2.Text = Format(8972.2, "Fixed")
Label3.Text = Format(6648972.265, "Standard")
Label4.Text = Format(6648972.265, "Currency")
Label5.Text = Format(0.56324, "Percent")
End Sub

The Output window is shown below:

 

(ii) The format of the user-defined Format function is

Format (n, “user’s format”)

Although it is known as user-defined format, we still need to follows certain formatting styles. Examples of user-defined formatting style are listed in Table 15.2

 

Table15.2: User-Defined format

Example	Explanation	Output
Format(781234.57,”0”)	Rounds to whole number without separators between thousands.	781235
Format(781234.57,”0.0”)	Rounds to 1 decimal place without separators between thousands.	781234.6
Format(781234.576,”0.00”)	Rounds to 2 decimal places without separators between thousands.	781234.58
Format(781234.576,”#,##0.00”)	Rounds to 2 decimal places with separators between thousands.	781,234.58
Format(781234.576,”$#,##0.00”)	Shows dollar sign and rounds to 2 decimal places with separators between thousands.	$781,234.58
Format(0.576,”0%”)	Converts to percentage form without decimal places.	58%
Format(0.5768,”0.00%”)	Converts to percentage form with 2 decimal places.	57.68%

          Example 15.2

Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click, Button5.Click, Button4.Click, Button3.Click
Label1.Text = Format(8972.234, "0.0")
Label2.Text = Format(8972.2345, "0.00")
Label3.Text = Format(6648972.265, "#,##0.00")
Label4.Text = Format(6648972.265, "$#,##0.00")
Label5.Text = Format(0.56324, "0%")
End Sub

The Output window is shown below:

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