Why can't I change the date format? I find it annoying how in filemaker it won't let me type the date in any way i want, eg "saturday may 15 2004" or 2004/05/15" or "jan 22 2003"... In access you can do that, and I think it makes inserting dates easier. I beleive the Canadian date format is yyyy/mm/dd, so for people in Canada it sucks to have to use the year last. Is there a way to change this?

You can!

In layout mode, select the field you wnat formated. Then go to "Format" and select "Date" ... change away.

Ok I see now... better, but is it possible to make it accept any of those date formats and then just reformat it on the fly?

As far as I can see, you have to input the date in the mm/dd/yyyy format and then it reformats it to the date format you have chosen. Is there a way to just accept any of those date input formats? Also, I've seen some apps that allow you to just type "today" for example, and it will automatically input today's date... is this easy to do in fm?

The date input depends on the systems formats for the machine where the file was created. I've seen files here attached from people in Australia. The date and time formats are not the same, and you can set preferences to use the original formats or your own formats.

As for entering the current date, you can just type command-"-" and the current date/time will be input. There are also plenty of popup calendars floating around that allow the input of dates by clicking on the calendar.

I just figured it out... you have to change the system's date format settings, in the control panel under "international".

This makes a lot of sense now, and I'm quite happy that it's possible to change it.

What is the best format to use? I'm confused because I think that here in Canada people use a variety of different formats. I've seen "yyyy/mm/dd" and "mm/dd/yyyy"... What's the "international standard"?

The ISO standard for dates is: yyyy-mm-dd