Format an Excel Column in the window's short date format.

[jim kane]

I'm trying to use com to format an Excel column as a date in window's short
date format.
It works for most regional settings but not Norwegian(Bokmal).
To test this I set my regional settings to Norwegian(Bokmal) in control
pannel. ( I have US windows xp and excel 2003 )
I call GetLocaleInfoW() to get the regional window's short date setting and
it returns 'dd.MM.yyyy' which is correct I believe.
I then set the NumberFormat Property of the Excel Column object to
'dd.MM.yyyy' by converting the unicode received from GetLocaleInfoW to a
bstring.
To my surprise a date such as 12 January 2006 appears in that column as
12.01.yyyy instead of 12.01.2006 as I expected.
using the NumberFormatLocal format produced the same result.
It appears that when regional settings are set to Norwegian(Bokmal) 'yyyy'
is not the correct date formating code for the year portion of the date.

If anyone can point me in the right direction on how to format a column for
the window's short date format for various regional settings, I'd greatly
appreciate it. using the date string from GetLocaleInfoW() isnt a useful
approach.
I was hoping there was a format string that allowed setting the date format
for a column to the window's short date format without having to construct a
string such as 'dd.MM.yyyy' which appears problematic.

Jim Kane

 

[NickHK]

Jim,
This works for me in VBA. Maybe your Unicode>BString code is not doing what
you expect ?

Private Declare Function GetLocaleInfo Lib "kernel32" Alias "GetLocaleInfoW"
(ByVal Locale As Long, ByVal LCType As Long, ByVal lpLCData As Long, ByVal
cchData As Long) As Long

Private Sub CommandButton1_Click()
Dim Buffer As String, Ret As Long
Dim GetInfo As String

Const LOCALE_USER_DEFAULT = &H400
Const LOCALE_SSHORTDATE As Long = &H1F

Buffer = String$(256, 0)

Ret = GetLocaleInfo(LOCALE_USER_DEFAULT, LOCALE_SSHORTDATE, StrPtr(Buffer),
Len(Buffer))

If Ret > 0 Then
GetInfo = Left$(Buffer, Ret - 1)
Else
GetInfo = ""
Exit Sub
End If

MsgBox GetInfo

Range("A1").Value = CLng(Now())
Range("A1").NumberFormat = GetInfo
Debug.Print Range("A1").Text

End Sub

 

[jim kane]

Nick:
Thanks for the reply but are you useing Norwegian(Bokmal) regional settings?
The approach works in general but not for that region where the .yyyy
returned from GetLocaleInfo is not accepted as year formating.
My bstring conversion is a simple call to SysAllocString().
Jim Kane

 

[NickHK]

Jim,
Yes, the MsgBox shows "dd.MM.yyyy".
With XL2000 & XL2002.

NickHK

 

[jim kane]

The MsgBox is meaningless. I display the same string. but when I use that
string to set the numberformat if my regional settings are set to Norwegian
dates subsequently do not display correctly.
I take it you have no idea why. Thanks anyway I'll repost
Jim Kane

 

[NickHK]

Jim,
I mean the format string used is correctly assigned as "dd.MM.yyyy" and the
resulting formatted date appears correctly as "25.01.2007". So in the VBA
code I posted everything works as expected on an English W2K system with
English XL2002.
However, in the Excel Immediate window, if you do:
?Application.International(xlDayCode)
d
?Application.International(xlMonthCode)
m
?Application.International(xlYearCode)
å

Not sure what effect this has on your code.

NickHK

 

[jim kane]

Yes, I found the same thing thanks to help I recieved on the
Comp.Lang.Clarion newsgroup. (Clarion is my favorite programming language.)

For the specific region I was working on Norwegian(Bokmul)

Windows (GetLocaleInfo()) returned:
dd.MM.yyyy

Excel Internation properties lead me to construct:
dd.mm.åååå

Using US English Windows and Excel, if I ignore what control panel says and
use the International(xlWhatever ) properties and send the
date format string I build from the excel properties to excel via the
'NumberFormat' and not the 'NumberFormatLocal' Property then it works.

Feeding info from Windows Control Panel like I was doing into excel did not
work. You would think the company that built windows could talk to the
company that built excel and get this straightened out. Apparently not.
Jim Kane

 

[NickHK]

Jim,
This localisation side to Windows and an app's integration with it becomes
confusing quickly, for me anyway.
Glad you got it sorted anyway.

NickHK