What a register column can hold

Generated page

This page is built from the declarations the platform itself runs on, so it is a description of what is there rather than a record of what somebody wrote down once. It is rebuilt every time the product is, which is why it cannot drift.

Every column in a register declares one of these. The kind decides what the column will accept: a value that does not fit is refused and reported back, never stored as something it is not, which is what keeps a column answerable across the whole register.

The same descriptions appear under the picker while you are declaring the column.

Kind	What it accepts
Text	Anything. The kind to choose when no other one fits.
Number	A quantity. Accepts digits and a decimal point; anything that is not a finite number is refused rather than stored.
Money	An amount. Accepts what a spreadsheet exports, so a currency symbol and thousands separators are stripped on the way in and $1,250.00 is stored as 1250.
Date	A date, kept as the text somebody typed rather than turned into a timestamp, because a timestamp would invent a time of day nobody chose. Refused if it cannot be read as a date at all.
Yes or no	Accepts yes, no, true and false, however they are capitalised, and 1 and 0 from a spreadsheet. Anything else is refused, so a column never quietly holds the word “false” as text.
Email	An email address, checked for shape and rendered so it can be clicked.
Phone	A phone number, kept as written so the spacing your team uses survives.
Link	A web address, rendered so it can be opened.
One of a list	One value from a list this column declares. Matched without regard to capitalisation and stored as the spelling you declared, which is what makes a status column answerable across the whole register rather than a question about how each person typed it.