Hi,
David Musgrave developed a user-defined function used in version 7 forward that can allow you to display a date in any format you want. Here is a copy of his article:
From David Musgrave
Over the years, I have seen a huge amount of effort and multiple calculated fields to format a date field on a report into a desired format that is something other than the default short date format, usually DD/MM/YYYY or MM/DD/YYYY depending on country (as defined in the control panel).
While you have to admire the efforts that people will go to to get a date displayed in a desired format, it frustrates me that so much effort goes into something that could be so quickly and easily achieved with the RW_DateToString() user defined Report Writer (RW) function.
The RW_DateToString() function is one of a suite of functions that I developed back in 2002 and got added to the core Dynamics.dic application dictionary for versions 7.0 onwards. For details on the other RW functions added, see the post on this blog in the more information section below.
To use the RW_DateToString() function, follow the steps below:
- Create a string calculated field
- Select User-Defiined Function: RW_DateToString
- Select the Fields tab
- Locate the date field you want displayed
- Click Add
- Select the Constants tab
- Select Type: String
- Enter the Constant as the desired date format template (see below)
- Click Add
- Click OK
The final Calculated Expression should be something like:
FUNCTION_SCRIPT( RW_DateToString Date "mmmm DD, YYYY" )
For example:
For today's date the format string "mmmm DD, YYYY" will produce "August 16, 2010".
The date format template string is a string constant which describes to the RW_DateToString() function how to display the date. Any text can be contained in the string and the following placeholder characters will be substituted with the appropriate:
Placeholder Characters Date Component Format
- ddd day of week as 3 letters
- dddd day of week in full
- N day of year
- NN day of year (padded)
- D day of month
- DD day of month (padded)
- M month of year
- MM month of year (padded)
- mmm month of year as 3 letters
- mmmm month of year in full
- YY year of date (2 digits)
- YYYY year of date (4 digits)
Note: If you want to change the language of the days of the week or the months of the year, please use the Modifier to change Message Resources IDs 12201 onwards and 18618 onwards respectively. These messages are used elsewhere in the application, so changing them here will affect more than just the RW_DateToString() function.
For more information see the posts below:
• This blog: Using the built-in Report Writer Functions
• DynamicsGP.ie blog: International date formats in Report Writer
I hope this saves you lots of time. Enjoy.
David
