How do I setup the date format to mm/dd/yyyy

  • Thread starter Thread starter Guest
  • Start date Start date
G

Guest

I went to control panel and changed format. I changed format in the input
mask. Now when I try and type a date it is giving me an error. I do know
Access quite well but am not a programmer. If someone could help me it will
save me lots of time. I should have done this in 5 minutes compared to now
couple of hours.....
 
Remove the input mask.

It is useless for most things, and worse than useless for dates.
 
On Mon, 4 Oct 2004 07:27:03 -0700, Paula Murray <Paula
I went to control panel and changed format. I changed format in the input
mask. Now when I try and type a date it is giving me an error. I do know
Access quite well but am not a programmer. If someone could help me it will
save me lots of time. I should have done this in 5 minutes compared to now
couple of hours.....
Click to expand...

The Format property and the Mask property interact, but they are *TWO
DIFFERENT PROPERTIES*. An Input Mask of 00/00/0000 forces the user to
type in six numeric digits (and optionally the slashes, it will fill
in the slashes for you) - but the Mask property knows absolutely
nothing about whether this is a date, a text string, or something
else. All the Mask does is constrain what keystrokes the user is
allowed to type.

You can set the Format property to mm/dd/yyyy (or, if you're dealing
with Europeans or some Canadians, dd/mm/yyyy) - this will control how
the Date/Time field is interpreted for display.

John W. Vinson[MVP]
Join the online Access Chats
Tuesday 11am EDT - Thursday 3:30pm EDT
http://community.compuserve.com/msdevapps
 
John said:
You can set the Format property to mm/dd/yyyy (or, if you're dealing
with Europeans or some Canadians, dd/mm/yyyy) - this will control how
the Date/Time field is interpreted for display.
Click to expand...

'Some Canadians' is right. The official standard is yyyy/mm/dd but I don't
often see that. I was doing an Access training session last week, and had
about a 50/50 split on what 05/06/2004 meant. Furthermore, no one in the
session even knew that they could change this setting on their computer.

I think a lot of computers are set up with the default (US English), and
people adjust their habits to suit the computer rather than the other way
around.

I always suggest using an unambiguous format in Access, like mmm/dd/yyyy or
dd/mmm/yyyy, then the date is clear - 05/Jun/2004.
 
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