Hi Micheal,
You can convert the vaue entered with the replacement of new value which can be generated by a regular expression replacement. To the exit event of component, write a javascript which runs at client.
First, create a regular expression (can learn how to create regular expressions from site
http://www.webreference.com/js/column5/index.html). This regular expression matches a single '(' at the beginning '\(?' and 3 digits
\d{3} and a closing parenthesis '\)?'.
Then, replace the value of the component with the specified 3 digist and a '-', $1-. $1 is the matching digits enclosed by parenthesis '(\d{3})'.
Lastly, set the resulting replacement back to component value.
This is the full script you can use.
re = /\(?(\d{3})\)?/;
val = this.rawValue;
result = this.rawValue.replace(re, "$1-"); // replace the match of regular expression with (\d{3}) three digits
this.rawValue = result; // set result back to component
Hope it helps and not so complicated. With regular expressions you can do many other replacements, checks.
Asiye