Frequently Asked Question

Why does Date Format keep reverting to American (mm/dd/yy)?
Last Updated 4 years ago

APPLICABLE AUDIENCE: PLATO Intranet Applications, United Kingdom and Australasia.

General Information
PLATO software is used internationally. Therefore it is designed to use the Regional Settings on users' computers and servers, wherever they may be.

Your facility has complete control over this.

You should set date and other local settings in the "Regional Settings" for users' PCs and PLATO servers. Both need to be set up correctly or you may still experience wrong date formats.

In addition, if you enter a date as 13/05/2009 and date setting has reverted to American mm/dd/yy, this is an illegal date that will not save.

 If your facility has user profiles with date or Regional settings, these need to be correct too.

If you are running a PLATO web application, the regional settings for the DCOM impersonated user, need to be correct.

If your PLATO system interfaces to Microsoft Word, you need to set up Microsoft Word to use the correct spelling, date and other local formats. These default to American, meaning that if you edit a date in Microsoft Word it may change itself to American format if the default setting is not changed.

In addition, language and other settings need to be correctly established in the PLATO Word Entry Forms. If somebody alters an Entry Form on a PC whose date settings are wrong, they may inadvertently change some or all of the Entry Form to use American settings. Then users may experience date settings intermittently reverting to the default American.

In summary, PLATO uses the date formats and other settings established by your facility. To avoid wrong date formats appearing in PLATO:

  1. Set up language and locale settings correctly for any PC used to create Word documents in PLATO.
  2. Confirm that the language/settings in PLATO Entry Forms have the correct formats.
We have noted that even if everything is set up correctly, some versions of Microsoft Word seem to have a fascination with American date formats. For example, a user entering a date in Word suddenly may be offered an auto-correct with American date format. This can be ignored and dates will not revert to American unless the typist accepts the auto-correct.

American Date Format in a Word Form Field

By default Microsoft Word uses American date format for any form fields in a Word Entry Form.

To change the format of a date field in a PLATO Word Entry Form:
  1. Open the PLATO Entry Form Manager
  2. Select the Service and Entry Form you would like to edit
  3. Click the Edit button
  4. Once the Word Entry Form has opened, double click the date Form Field you would like to change
  5. The Microsoft Word Form Field Properties box
  6. Change the date format of the form field to what ever format you would like the date to appear in
  7. Click OK
  8. Select Save and Return to PLATO from the Word File Menu
The date format of this form field is now correct.

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