Date Columns
Dates are an essential part of every business process; your database may contain due dates, delivery dates, payment dates, clients’ birthdates, and more.
Columns of the Date type include a calendar button that allows database users to choose a date, helping to avoid any other type of data entry.
When displayed or converted to text, the date format is automatically determined based on the
Language and Location
settings specified in the user profile.
In cases where the data is accessed by someone who is not a database user, theLanguage and Location
settings specified in the database properties are used to determine the text representation of the date.
General Properties
If a column contains data that doesn’t appear or behave as desired, you can edit the column’s General Properties and the properties defined by the column type.
You can select the Today
option in the General Properties, and today’s date value will be inserted by default into this Date field when a new record is created.
Date Options
Using Date column properties, you can change the date format according to your needs.
Below are descriptions of the properties defined by the column type.
- Format
- This property allows a user to specify the format in which the date value will be represented. The following options are possible:
- Short Date
- Long Date
- Month Day - month preceding day, for example, November 24
- Year Month - month preceding year, for example, January 2007
- Help
- When the Help text property is filled in, a question mark is displayed near the field name on the View/Edit form. Hovering over this question mark will show a pop-up with a tip or a help text message.