Date problems

[Wallis]

I'm fairly new to Filemaker.

I'm trying to add a Drop Down Calendar. I set up a date field and then formatted it as a Drop Down Calendar. When I see it on the form, it looks good so far - I click on it and see the month and can select a dat. But then the problems start...

I get a beep and a warning message "The value of tis field must be a valid date in the range of years 1 to 4000 and should look like "25/12/2003".

Now the date shows as 25 12 2003, so I go to Edit Layout, Select Date Format and select the layout that gives 25/12/2003. But the next date I try to select, it resets to 25 12 2003, beeps and I get the same error message.I then have to Revert Field.

This is driving me crazy! Any help would be much appreciated.

Walt

[comment]

Can you replicate this problem in a brand new file? If yes, what happens if you click into a date field (with no calendar attached) and select Insert > Current Date?

[Wallis]

Can you replicate this problem in a brand new file? If yes, what happens if you click into a date field (with no calendar attached) and select Insert > Current Date?

Yes,I can replicate it. I set up a new Database with a single Field - "Date". I set that to type: Date.

I then added a drop down calendar and selected a date - I got the same Error message. I changed the drop down calendar to Edit box and did "Insert Current date" - still the same error message

So I changed the field to type: Timestamp (you never know!) - but nothing changed, except that the error message now includes a time as well as a date format

Walt

[comment]

Check your computer OS setting for 'short date' format. Make sure it includes separators between the items (preferably slashes, but hyphens or dots should work just as well).

Note that the way you format the field on the layout is irrelevant here: you could format it to display as "2011x04x17" but Filemaker would not let you enter a date this way unless your OS short date was set to 'yyyyxmmxdd'.

[Wallis]

Check your computer OS setting for 'short date' format. Make sure it includes separators between the items (preferably slashes, but hyphens or dots should work just as well).

Note that the way you format the field on the layout is irrelevant here: you could format it to display as "2011x04x17" but Filemaker would not let you enter a date this way unless your OS short date was set to 'yyyyxmmxdd'.

Thanks so much for your help - that solved it - Phew!

Walt