Field formatters force the contents of extracted fields into a predefined format. Each formatter type provides a properties window.

For extraction fields that are used for validation, the best practice is for you to use field formatters. For example, amount formats may contain both periods and commas (1,500.00). To use such a recognition result for arithmetic validations, the results need to be reformatted to numeric values.

Another aspect of using field formatters for validation is that the formatters determine properties for the field that can be used for doing calculations in script validation rules. DoubleValue, DateValue, and DoubleFormatted are examples of field formatters used for validation. In the Visual Basic Script, the DateValue function significantly facilitates date comparisons that use the type Date. For example, InvoiceDate is newer than OrderDate.