Q: Access, stop trying to be smart!

[Mark]

Hi all,

Using forms on Access 2003. If I have a textbox control bound to a date
field, and if I put in 12/6, it automatically changes it to 12/6/2007
(current year). However, if I put 2/29, instead of saying it's an invalid
date, it assumes I mean m/yy and changes it to 2/1/2029.

Any way to dumb it down so that it always requires a m/d/yy format to be
entered and returns an error if the date entered is invalid? I don't even
want Access to assume the year because we're dealing with 2005-2008 dates and
I think it opens up for more errors if Access assumes current year.

Thanks much!

 

[Mark]

Forgot about the input mask.

 

[John W. Vinson]

Hi all,

Using forms on Access 2003. If I have a textbox control bound to a date
field, and if I put in 12/6, it automatically changes it to 12/6/2007
(current year). However, if I put 2/29, instead of saying it's an invalid
date, it assumes I mean m/yy and changes it to 2/1/2029.

Any way to dumb it down so that it always requires a m/d/yy format to be
entered and returns an error if the date entered is invalid? I don't even
want Access to assume the year because we're dealing with 2005-2008 dates and
I think it opens up for more errors if Access assumes current year.

Thanks much!

As much as I dislike date input masks this may be a case for one: if you use
an input mask like 90/90/00 it will force you to type month, day and (two
digit) year for all dates. Since Access' assumption that an unspecified year
can be assumed to be the current year disagrees with your business case (where
you CANNOT make that assumption!) it may be appropriate to force the user to
type a couple of extra keystrokes to ensure that the right year is entered.

John W. Vinson [MVP]

 

[david]

World + dog agrees with you. Interesting recent post here
indicated that MS was not aware of this behaviour !!!!!

Perhaps they will do usability studies now that they have noticed it?

Joel-on-software has presented the theory that MS has automated
all of the testing, so there are no testers to notice this kind of
thing, which would explain how MS could be unaware of it.

(david)