Would someone post a detailed explanation of how each of the numeric formats work, how they store and display numbers, how they work in calculations, their idiosyncrasies, why one format is better than another for a specific purpose (such as packed is better than decimal for dollar fields), etc.?

Having this info in one topic would be very helpful and much more efficient than doing multiple searches and reading dozens of topics when looking for this info.

Thank you,

John

John

it should be all in the manual, so why copy that here?

If you don't have a manual, they are available for download from tech support.

John, try these for a start:
http://techsupport.informationbuilders.com/tech/ibm/ibm_tmo_TM7815_p1.html
http://techsupport.informationbuilders.com/tech/ibm/ibm_tmo_TM7815_p2.html