Historical dates

[Chris Warren]

My research covers the years between 1780 and 1860. Does anyone know I can set up Access to manipulate dates in this period (and in a format something like dd/Month/yyyy).
Thanks

 

[raskew]

So long as you are using full years (yyyy) Access will have no problem manipulating dates in the same manner it works with current dates.

 

[Tezcatlipoca]

And if it does, you can just set your date field(s) to Text, and type in the date(s) manually.

 

[Chris Warren]

Thanks for the suggestions. It works just fine, sorting things into chronological order.
However, operating with real data brings me on to another problem. I know some dates precisely ( eg 22 December 1827) such as those obtained from dated letters, but others I only know to the nearest year (eg Born 1796). Is there any way of handling this in a single field? Something like 00 June 1796 would be fine.

 

[Chris Warren]

Thanks again. Its a pity though, as there is a 1 in 365 chance that it could be a real date as opposed to an "artificial" day/month (I've actually tried 1 Jun as it's halfway through the year and therefore bound to be within 6 months of the "truth").
Would it be good practice add an extra field called "precision" and link it to a table with "day", "month" and "year"? In that way I will know whether it is a real date or an approximation and be able to refine the data as I discover more precise info.