Format of date/time records 1

[jjmclell]

Hi there,

I have a date/time field on my form and I'm having a problem where the access keeps adding seconds to my time entry. For example, if I enter a date and time of:

2007/04/10 3:52 PM

Access changes it to this when I switch the focus on the form:

2007/04/10 3:52:00 PM

Is there anyways to format the date/time data type so it doesn't do this?

jjmclell

 

[lameid]

If I am remembering the formats for dates rigth cold putting the following in the format of the control or field definiation on the format property should work.

yyyy/mm/dd h:nn A

I may not be remembering AM and PM correctly, so you might have to lookup the date formatting in help.

 

[jjmclell]

Thanks, that is what I have to do I've discovered...however, I can't just put it into the format field in the properties box b/c you can only select default formats from a drop down menu. This means I have to code it in and I've found the Format method but I'm having trouble getting it to work. Here are my questions:

1) Do I code the format for the text box as an event?
2) Format(expression,[ format,[ firstdayofweek,[ firstweekofyear]]]) ...how does this syntax work? If I want to format the input as mm/dd/yyyy h:nn A, what would the code look like? I keep getting errors no matter what I try.

Thanks,

jjmclell

 

[lameid]

Just because there is a drop down doesn't necessarily mean you can't type into it. You can put that format into the format property of a textbox and it will format the data as specified.

However, to force input to be entered a certain way you would want to specify an input mask. I would recommend against it for a date.

If you specify the format and I entered

January 5, 2007 18:00:15

Then the text box would change the screen display to...

01/05/2007 6:00 PM

Using an input mask, I would have to enter it exactly as you specified. I find that using input masks on date and time fields eventually ends up with a user complaining about it. Note in my example, I did enter seconds so you may need an afterupdate event or validation rule to keep seconds out of the input.

Perhpas of validation rule of

Second (DateTimeField) = 0

Or if you just wanted to drop the seconds in the afterupdate you could use the second funtion with the datediff function to get the desired result.

 

[jjmclell]

Thanks a lot. Your method of typing the format into the format field in the properties box is the right way to do it. I did try it yesterday and couldn't get it to work but I was probably doing something stupid like typing the date format into the italics property. Thanks again,

jjmclell