Multiple Input Mask Placeholders

[Adrianna]

Okay..this should be simple. I'm using the short date input mask, but because some of our customers use dd/mm/yyyy and others use mm/dd/yyyy, our home office has chosen to stick with the standard of mm/dd/yyyy for the civilian sector.

My question is....I would like to be able to use:
99/;0;m 99/;0;d 0000;0;y (All together though)..and I've tried the amp

so that the input mask will remind users that they need to follow the mm/dd/yyyy

The test group didn't like the reminder on the bottom of the form that said mm/dd/yyyy and they didn't feel like the __/__/____ was working.

 

[Pat Hartman]

Input masks cannot properly edit a date. Dates are edited when Access tries to save them.

For your purposes, I would change the format to Medium Date. Then when the user types 8/3 and tabs out of the field, Access will reformat the field to show 03-Aug-02 which should jog people into looking to be sure they entered the date correctly.

 

[Adrianna]

The problem results with date and months under 12.
So if a user enters 8/12/2002
U.S. Gov and Military will think it is Dec 8, 2002
and
Civilian will think the same date is August 12, 2002

So I just wanted to provide them with a guide so that they will remember that we are collecting data in the mm/dd/yyyy format

many users find the Medium date confusing to edit....I don't know why, but that's the feed back that I got.

I have to many field and to little form space to want to include the (mm/dd/yyyy) reminders after each label for each date field.

 

[afloyd]

How about using a pop-up that displays the date and asks the user to verify and then gives them the chance to move on or to make the correction. Just an idea.

 

[Adrianna]

Afloyd,
Thanks...that's a good suggestion. I'm pretty stubborn and I can't believe that there is no way to use more then one place holder in the input mask.

You're idea is really good. I will have to pass it by the customer. I'm also thinking about the possibility of chaning it over to a medium date. That would prevent the confusion of date interpretation.

 

[afloyd]

glad I could help.

 

[nalgarryn]

I'm trying to do this now...

There is only one character slot for input mask Placeholder, and I want to use multiple placeholders. Is this still not available in Access 2013?

We have a field that combines date and time:
yyyy-mm-dd hh:nn
We want to enter this all with numbers, and using the international standard (decreasing from year to second) as it is (hopefully!) least confusing.

We format this in reports the following way:
ddd yyyy-mmm-dd hh:nn

Thanks!