In one of my databases I have one date field that no matter what I do, displays the date as dd/mm/yyyy. I have tried to change it in Date Format to mm/dd/yyyy, nothing works! Has anyone else had this type of problem? What did you do?

-Kate

It's possible that you have a text field rather than a date field. If it's defined as a text field, then date formatting will have no effect.

Nope, looked at that. It is defined as a date field. Do you have any other ideas??

I fixed this in the Control Panel of the PC. Go to Regional and Language Options. Choose English (United States) instead of English(Australia) or whatever it is.

That was a great suggestion, but it was correctly defined as United States when I checked it. I really thought that you had it there!! I don't know, it doesn't make sense why the date would change in one file, one field!!

What happens if you save a clone of the file with "No Records" and then import the current file into it. Does it have an effect on the date structure then? You could do this with just a sample of the current file (4 or 5 records).

Lee

Woo-hoo!!! That worked! No, it didn't have an effect on my data structure. I'm still a little curious as to why it happened, but at least now I know how to get around it! Thanks Lee!

Kate

Hi Kate,

Glad it worked.

This is a workaround that is used to change the System data when a file is created on a different country version of filemaker than the one you are using. Just changing or using the "Set Use System Formats script step" doesn't change the date format unless you have an empty file (I can't tell you why), and I hope that this is changed in version 7.

Lee

Ahhh....I see. Thanks for explaining that. No, it doesn't make sense why an empty file was needed to make the format change. I'm just really glad that I now know a workaround if something like that happens again. Thanks again!

Kate