InfoPath Dev

I have several fields (Opt Buttons) where I've chnaged their "Type" to Whole Number from Text.  This seems to have worked fine in InfoPath forms, but I cannot figure how to get the SharePoint Content Types (nor the Form Library fields) to switch over to Number (stays on "single line of text")....even after re-publishing forms.  I need these to be numbers so that when I export to Excel, I can do some analysis, calculations & charting.  Any suggestions?  thanks!

You can create the column in SharePoint first and make it the data type you prefer, then you when you promote your field, associate it with the pre-made column in SharePoint.

Or, you can select the button at promotion time that says "allow users to edit in SharePoint."  If you do that, then the column name in SharePoint becomes active and editable.

Thank you!  When I try your second approach (as I'd like to not have to start over and recreate all the SharePoint Content Types/Form Library columns), InfoPath gives me an error message that says, "The selected field's data type cannot be edited in SharePoint."  I tried both Whole and Double number formats for these fields.

Hmm, shoot, I am not sure which data types aren't supported.  I'm surprised number type fields are like that.

Anyway, the first method is a best practice, because it's much better to create site columns (even site collection columns) so that the same column can be re-used in other places on your site (or site collection).  Creating columns locally in a library is the least useful way to leverage metadata in SharePonit 2007 (it was all we had in 2003).