The appearance of numeric data depends on the following factors:

BIRT Studio provides common formats you can use to change how numbers appear. You can, for example, display numbers with or without decimal values, in scientific notation, as a percentage, or with a currency symbol.

Even when a column displays numbers, the data in the column can be of string type. Postal codes, for example, are frequently stored as string data. Numeric formats do not apply to numbers of string type. When you select a column for formatting, the title of the formatting dialog box tells you what type of data the column contains.