Editions Available: Corporate;Enterprise Audience: Administrative Users

Changing the Edit Type (Data Format) of a Field

When you add or modify a field, you need to choose an edit type. The edit type you select is based on what information you want users to enter in the field. For example, if you want users to enter a description of the job, you want to use one of the text edit types whereas if you want the user to enter the desired salary of a candidate, you’ll want to use a numeric edit type. There are four categories of edit types:

  • Text – Allows any character or symbol.
  • Numeric – Allows numeric values.
  • Date/time – Allows a date or time.
  • Predefined Values – Allows one or many values from a predefined list.

To change the edit type of a field

  1. From your Bullhorn Menu, select Field Mappings.
    • S-Release: On the Tools menu, select Field Mappings.
  2. Click the expand arrow to the left of the chosen entity.
  3. Search for the chosen field.
  4. Click the name of the field.
  5. From the Edit Type drop-down, select the new edit type.
  6. Click Submit.
  • When you change the edit type of a field, the data stored in that field remains until you manually edit or delete it from the record. For example if a field with the drop-down edit type has a value of 'Paralegal' and the edit type of the field is changed to a text field, the value is retained. While this is good as data is not lost, it may also be bad because if a field is re-purposed, the previous value may no longer make sense. Also, if you change, for example, a large text field (i.e., a text block) to a smaller text field, the field will still contain all of the data. However, you will have to scroll within the field to see it all.
  • When you change a text field to a numeric field, the data will still be in the database but, because the numeric type does not support displaying text values, you won’t be able to see the stored values on screen.
  • Some custom fields are restricted to specific edit types:
    • Custom Float fields can only be changed to Integer, Money, Mini Picker, or Drop-Down.
    • Custom Integer fields can only be changed to Mini Picker or Drop-Down.
    • Custom Text fields can be changed to anything except Float, Money, Date/Time, and Integer.
    • Custom Date fields can only be changes to Date/Time or Time.