While I know nowt about Access 2010.
Whilst working I had to use excel and word. Just learning about an individual point did not cut ice when posed with a slightly different problem. I had to learn the basics from which expansion grew.
There are a number of free Tutorial websites Indeed I learnt about the windows 7 vagaries from http://www.gcflearnfree.org. Which I would never have found from help menu
It appears to have a lot of information about Access 2010. if you have not already been there.

I'm thinking that it is a predefined template that can't be altered in the traditional way via design view.

Presumably it's not possible to see the template or change some its settings?

Have a read through this which describes what is happening quite well.

The original locale of the template was US. When you create a new database using the template, the locale changes and rather than seeing "Currency" you see the hard coded version. You can only change this back to "Currency" which then picks up the new locale. What you don't appear to be able to do is define the "Currency" format forcing leading 0's with place holders in an input mask.

The currency format should always align correctly as far as I know (right justified with 2 decimal positions).

Interesting...

Wow, thanks for that! At least it provides an explanation, which is what I sought.

Whether it's the correct thing for Access to do in the more general sense is another issue, but as I'm only doing domestic personal apps it's fine for me

I've now found that database is a web database - the clue (doh!) was the tiny globe on the tables, forms, queries and reports icons on the Navigation Pane on the left.

I've also found that Design View is NOT available for a web database. It seems that MS inhibited it as it gave too many facilities that couldn't be handled by Sharepoint Server (the host for publishing a web database). Create a client (or desktop) database and Design View is available.

As an educational exercise I'm moving the Home Inventory database to a client database. Though the tables can be exported from web and imported to client, queries, forms and reports can't be, so as that's where much of my education is needed it's a useful experience.