Date Fields

Here we explain how dates are displayed and entered.

Today's Date Shortcut

A quick and easy way to insert today's date into any date field in a set of books is to type the letter t, then press Enter.

Dates are displayed according to a date display format that is part of each user's options. The following table displays the date display formats available in NewViews. The date February 26, 2005 at time 13:25:15 is shown, as it would appear using each format.

Each user has a date entry format that can be set in the user's options to one of the following two values:

• scan

  The characters entered can be in any of the forms in the date display format table above, and NewViews will recognize the date.

• ddmmyyyy

  If this date entry format is used then dates can be entered as indicated by the format, i.e. day, then month, then year, all as numbers. There can be no spaces or other characters.

Advantages of the scan date entry format

The most obvious advantage of using the scan format is that you can enter dates in a wide variety of ways and NewViews will recognize them. When you complete an entry, NewViews will try to recognize the date using the formats in the table above. Then, regardless of the way the date was entered, it will be displayed according to the date display format when the entry is completed. So, regardless of the display format, you still have a wide variety of ways to actually enter a date.

Also, when you edit an existing date, it will continue to be displayed in the date display format. You can edit it in place, as-is. For example, suppose the display format is month dd, yyyy, so February 26, 2005 is displayed Feb 26, 2005. When you press <Esc> or <Home> to start editing the field without clearing it first, you can cursor around and edit any part of it. You can change Feb to Mar to change the month to March, or you can change 2005 to 2006 by editing one character. The resulting value will be recognized by NewViews because it fits one of the formats in the table above.

Advantages of the ddmmyyyy date entry format

At first it would appear that scan is superior because it is so robust, recognizing so many formats. And you certainly don't want to give up the ability to edit an existing date as-is in its display format.

But you can think of the ddmmyyyy as offering additional features to scan instead of replacing scan's features. The first point to understand is that if a date is not recognized as a valid date under the ddmmyyy format, NewViews tries again using scan. So using ddmmyyyy only gives this format the first crack at parsing the date.

The next point is that ddmmyyyy has advantages when editing existing dates. You only need to change the part of the date that you actually want to change. Most often this will be just the day. You can enter just the digits representing the new day and press <Enter> or otherwise complete the entry, and NewViews will merge the entered value with the previous value. Only the day of the previous value will change. To change the day and month, you enter three or four digits but the concept is the same. The day and month change but the year of the existing date remains the same.

So if there is already a date in the field you are editing, you can reduce keystrokes and errors by entering only the portion of the date that actually needs to be changed.

The hidden advantage of ddmmyyyy is that when entering dates you only have to remember one format. Remember that the way a date is entered is independent of the way it will be displayed when the entry is complete. The date will always be displayed according to the user's date display format on journals, reports, transactions, and other documents.

Pop-up Calendar

The issue of date entry formats is moot if you use <F3> on date fields, because in that case you can pick a date from a pop-up calendar. The calendar pops up on the field's current date, or the current system date if the field is empty. From there you can navigate the calendar and pick any date.

Recommendations

• Choose a date display format that includes the full year.

  You may have overriding reasons to choose a format that displays only two digits for the year but otherwise, we recommend against it. A year such as 2005 will display as 05 and this could be confused with the day or month.

• Choose a format that displays the month in letters, not digits.

  This eliminates confusion between the month and day. Some countries display dates in day-month order and others use month-day. But users will never be confused if the month of February is displayed as Feb.

Default Formats

The default display format is ddmonthyyyy.

February 26, 2005 is displayed as 26Feb2005. This satisfies the recommendations because its uses four digits for the year and displays the month in letters. This format is short and avoids any confusing whether the day or month is first because the month is in letters.

The default date entry format is ddmmyyyy.

This captures the advantages of both the scan and ddmmyyyy formats as described above.

You are free to choose any alternatives by changing the date display and entry formats of a user's options.

Comments

• Only valid calendar dates are allowed.

  NewViews checks all dates entered to verify that they are valid calendar dates. Valid calendar dates are dates that you can find on calendars. For example, February 29, 2005 is invalid because 2005 is not a leap year. If an invalid calendar date is entered, an error message will be displayed and you must enter a valid date or quit the entry before you can continue.

• NewViews accepts valid calendar dates anywhere in the range January 1, 1903 to December 31, 2037.

  This limitation is temporary and will be removed in future versions.

• NewViews is time-ready.

  Notice that the table of display formats provides for times. Although not really used yet, NewViews is time-aware, and all dates can in fact include a time. Unless or until this feature proves useful in an accounting application it will be generally ignored. All dates that you will typically enter or manage will contain a time of 00:00:00 which means twelve o'clock am, i.e. midnight.

Why did we pick these display formats?

The specific set of formats in the display format table were selected because they can be parsed unambiguously. That is, they cannot only be used for the purpose of display, but they can also be used for input without conflicting with each another.

For example, notice that there are no purely numeric formats in day-month order. If you are looking for a purely numeric format that places the day before the month, you will not find one. The reason is that this would introduce an ambiguity when attempting to parse an entered date. NewViews would not be able to recognize whether a date was entered in day-month order or month-day if both fields were in a numeric form. Q.W.Page had to pick one of the two forms for the date format table, and we admit that the main reason for offering the month-day form was that it is used in the United States. However, users that want to enter the day first in a purely numeric form can use the ddmmyyyy date entry format in their user options. And if they want the day displayed first there are many formats that will do so. For example, the ddmonthyyyy format will display the day first. Since it is not a purely numeric format, ambiguity is not a problem.