Date problem

[Lyndseyd]

Hi,

I have a slight problem with the some of the dates on my forms. All of my date fields are set with the input mask: 99/99/00;0;_ and are in the format of 'short date'. Some users have found that once they have entered a date, the date mixes up, for example when 31/03/06 is entered it changes automatically to 06/31/03.

At first i thought it may be a problem with the launguage their computers were set to, but this is not the case they are set correctly. This does not happen for all users either, it is just a few people. Recently some of the users have been having an Active X error message appear and so they have had to reinstall this, im not sure if these two problems are linked. I have taken over the database froms someone else so im struggling to find whats wrong.

I have searched the forum to find an anwswer, but couldnt find anything, i think i must have entered the wrong search criteria as i doubt im the only one to have had this problem.

I would be grateful if someone could help, or point me in the direction of a thread which may help me. Thanks.

 

[ansentry]

Open control panel / Regional and Language Option / Regional Option and see what is showing in the short date.

I am in Australia and mine shows 5/04/2006

Under "Select an item to match its preferences, etc I have English(Australia)

 

[Lyndseyd]

Thanks for the reply, although i have tried that and thy are set to: English (United Kingdom) as i want. The strange thing is that they have been able to enter the dates before and have had no problems and its only a few people who are having this problem too.

 

[neileg]

I don't understand why you have imposed a mask if it is a date.

I tend to avoid dd/mm/yyyy formats becasue of the UK/US difference. I prefer dd-mmm-yyyy (05-April-2006) which never seems to cause any issues.

 

[Lyndseyd]

Well as i have said it wasn't my database, i was just told to look after it and solve any problems which may occur. The main reason for the input maski think, was because i work in a fuels company, with 14 different nationalities working here, they would all be entering dates in different formats and do still try to.

I have already tried taking the input mask off and just had the format as short date, but it still happens. This is why i posted on here as i feel i have looked at all of the possible reasons why the date could be doing this.

 

[neileg]

Don't know if I can help. Two thoughts, though.

I suspect, but can't prove, that Access inheirits the date formats that are current when it is installed, and that if you change the local settings later, this doesn't propogate to Access. I'd be happy to be proved wrong, though.

Second thought. Access stores dates as a number, and only formats these to look like a date when you view the data. If it is using US format on some PCs, this is not a data problem but a formatting problem.

What would I do? Step 1 would be to uninstall and then re-install Access on one of the machines that has a problem. See if that fixes it. Second would be to reformat thehard disk and reinstall everything, ensuring that the date format is correct in windows .