It would be great to have the ability NOT to be forced to select a uniform level of decimal precision for a Numbers Field, and instead just retain the numbers exactly as entered. I appreciate the option to force a particular level of precision in some instances, but in many situations it would be much more convenient, not to mention more accurate, if the decimal precision was not standardized for an entire field.
This is particularly important when the data needs to be used for formula calculations. While it is possible to record numbers accurately as text in a Single Line Text field, it quickly becomes a convoluted and error-prone process to convert them back and forth to number formats for use in calculations while also retaining the appropriate level of data precision for each record. This Ask the Community thread ( How to create a ‘Numbers’ field WITHOUT uniform decimal precision?) explains the issue in more detail (and also outlines some of the convoluted workarounds currently required in order to accommodate data with variable decimal precision in Airtable)
My specific suggestion would be something along these lines: When creating a new Numbers Field I would love for the format options to include something like “variable precision” or “not specified” as a choice in the Precision drop down, or, perhaps a “show numbers as entered” choice of equal rank to ‘decimal’ and ‘integer’ in the primary format drop down… or just to make all of those selections optional so that the default Numbers Field format assumes that the user enters data exactly the way they want it unless otherwise specified.
Thanks for considering it!
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