Alter Access Field Formats - ms-access

I have a field that is formatted as a short date. When the field is empty, how do I get text to appear in the field as guidance? For example, I want the field to read "DATE RECEIVED" when empty, but, when completed force a short date entry.

Adjust the Format property of the textbox displaying the value to:
yyyy-mm-dd;;;"DATE RECEIVED"

Related

Recognition of a date as a date in Access Forms filtering

I have an Access data table with the Field "RequiredUntil", which is from the type "Date/Time", and several other columns, and a form, in which I show that table, and where I usually use right mouse click to filter for what I want. The text box for "RequiredUntil" is formatted as "Short Date".
Part of the form:
When I now do a right click on the field "RequiredUntil" in that form, Access properly recognizes that as a date, and offers me several date filters, i.e. Today, "This week", Past,... So I don't use any SQL there, all is done by Access!
When I select "Today" (or Yesterday or Tomorrow), I get a "Data type mismatch in criteria expression" error.
When I select "This week" (or any other time period), the filter is properly set - but as soon as I filter the next column, I get a
Syntax Error in Query expression '((Year([DataTable].[RequiredUntil])=Year(Date())) AND
(DatePart("ww";[DataTable].[RequiredUntil];0)=DatePart("ww",Date(),0))'.
In that case, the date filter is revoked, and only the second filter is applied.
So, I don't do any SQL, RequiredUntil is of the type Date/Time, the text field in the Form is Date/Time, Access recognizes it as Date - what am I missing?
I'm pretty sure, the issue is caused by Null values in your date field.
If removed, you can set the filter, which will reveal as:
(DateSerial(Year([DataTable].[RequiredUntil]), Month([DataTable].[RequiredUntil]), Day([DataTable].[RequiredUntil])) = Date()+1)
which, obviously, will fail, as DateSerial doesn't accept Null values.

MSAccess Change Date Value Before Validation

In a grid I have a date/time field where I would like the user to be able to type in short-hand formats for dates and times. For example, if they type in "435p" and then focus off of the cell they get the message "The value you entered isn't valid for this field.". Instead, I want to trap a pre-validationevent and change it to "4:35pm" for them.
What event can I use?
I've tried:
LostFocus & BeforeUpdate: too late (validation fires before event)
Dirty & OnChange: too early (they haven't left the cell yet)
Or is there a way to turn off the native validation rule that is checking for date formats?
You could use an additional text field without formatting (or with your very own format). Then show this instead of the datetime-field and update the date-time field with your code.
Not very pretty, but if you always format the input to a proper time string on before-update and never access this field (but rather the real date-time field) you should be ok. You could even name the field Helper_DateTime or somesuch, so you are never tempted to access the field from anywhere else ;)

Data Type Error when added Input Mask on Date Time Field

i have a date/time field called MyDate. Originally, its format is mm/dd/yyyy and there is no input mask. The Date Picker is also set. I then added input mask using Short date , changed the default input maks to (99-99-0000;;_) and change the format to mm-dd-yyyy. However, when i switch to DataSheet view , all my dates are changed from mm/dd/yyyy to mm-dd-yyyy (which is the correct behaviour right? ) and when I tried to enter a new date or modify existing date, it says "The value you entered does not match Date/Time data type in this column". Plus, the DatePicker is missing. How can I resolve this. thank you
The date time picker is not available if an input mask is applied to a field: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/access-help/add-and-customize-date-and-time-formats-HA010078108.aspx#_Toc272229486
Regarding the error, have you considered using your regional settings in the control panel, which sets the defaukt date display for all (most?) applications?
Dates in Access are stored as numbers, so you can format them however you like, but I suspect the input mask may need to match the regional settings, although I am not certain.

VBA Access Specify Field Format for a Date/Time Field

I am having issues with changing the Field Format of a existing Data/Time Field.
I want to add a field called "Duration" to a table called "IncidentData" and change the field to show only the hour and minutes information such as "13:44"
It is possible to set the format property of the field to Short Time or hh:nn.
alt text http://ltd.remou.com/access/tableformat.png

Validation Problem in vba text box

I want to validate a text box
where the user enters the date in format dd/mm
and time hh/mm
in the same text box
how to do this?
There is no simple way to achieve this. There are a couple of complicated ways.
You can make the control unbound, then write a handler for the After Update event of the control. In this handler, you will need to validate the user's entry, create a date value from the entry (presumably defaulting the year to the current year), and assign that value to the field storing the date. In addition, you will need an OnCurrent event on the form, where you will set the value of the unbound control to be the appropriately-formatted text version of the date of the current record.
Note that this method won't work in a Continuous form, only on a Single Form.