In Writer Custom Properties of Number Type don’t offer format options as custom fields

[Grok28]

When I create a custom property in LO Writer of the type Number and want to use this number later in a Custom field LO Writer does not offer any number format options, like say leading zeros or currencies. This is different from the type Date which will offer all the formats including custom ones. Of course I can use any number as text and “format” it to my liking but that would make the Number type obsolete.
Simple question:

• What do I have to do to enter a number as custom property, use it later with a custom field and format it say with a leading zero.
  Thanks in advance.

[ajlittoz]

This is not possible presently. Writer has been enhanced (at least 7.x) to allow formatting of inherently numeric field data with leading zeroes. But this does not extend to numeric custom properties though date properties can be formatted in any way you like.

Since a date is encoded as a floating point of which the integral part is the day, I tried to outsmart Writer by entering a very old date and formatting it as a number with leading zeroes. But this is not practical:

• you can’t manually enter a date (near 1900 or 1904) and you must use a popped-up calendar (not easy to shift near 1900)
• once you have inserted your fake date field, you can no longer modify its formatting

The best thing to do is to submit an enhancement request at https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/.

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[Grok28]

Thanks ajlittoz. At the end of the day not really a big issue as one can choose text as type and then use whatever alphanumeric string one likes.