Crystal Reports Basic number formatting issue

Message

   Hello readers.
I am tired of trying to make various number present in the format that I need them.

For example, dates (which are stored as yyyymmdd) always display as yy,yym,mdd.00 - is there a way that I can ALWAYS get the number to display as whole number. ie without having to specifically change the display property every time that I use the field in my report.

Another are where I am having difficulty is each user has a numerical ID.
They have a staff photo associated to them. 
In one of my reports, I want to display their photo - which means creating a filename on the fly such as 123.jpg  or 2398.jpg - but crystal insists on using 123.00  or 2,398.00.

By using 
stringvar PicName:= totext(truncate(StaffID)) &".jpg" 
I am able to get rid of the trailing ".00", but this still produces "2,398.jpg" where the staff id is > 1000

There must be an easier way to get rid of the "," than breaking up the string every 3 characters.
If you know how - please share it with us.

Thanks