Microsoft KB Archive/208596

= How Windows regional settings affect Microsoft Access 2000 =

Article ID: 208596

Article Last Modified on 10/25/2004

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APPLIES TO


 * Microsoft Access 2000 Standard Edition

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This article was previously published under Q208596



This article applies to a Microsoft Access database (.mdb) and to a Microsoft Access project (.adp).

Moderate: Requires basic macro, coding, and interoperability skills.



SUMMARY
This article describes how Microsoft Access 2000 handles Currency formats, Date/Time formats, and Number formats when you change the regional settings in Control Panel in Microsoft Windows 95, Microsoft Windows 98, or Microsoft Windows NT 4.0.

Note This article assumes that you are using Access with Windows 95, Windows 98, or Windows NT 4.0. The regional settings and the international settings in earlier versions of Windows are are different from the regional settings and the international settings in Microsoft Windows 95, Microsoft Windows 98, or Microsoft Windows NT 4.0.



Currency Format
When the regional setting of your computer are changed to a different locale, and that locale has a different Currency format, the Format property of the fields or of the controls in Access databases or Access projects that were set to Currency will be substituted with a custom format. This retains the initial format of the fields or of the controls.

For example, if you set the regional settings to English (United States), create an OrderAmount field with the Format property as Currency in an Access database, and then you store values, the values in the field will appear as follows:

  Order Amount $34,553.00    $235.00 If you later change the regional settings to English (United Kingdom), the Format property of the field changes to a custom property that is similar to the following:

$#,##0.00;($#,##0.00)

This retains the format that corresponds to the locale English (United States). Also, the field values that appear are the same as the field values that were mentioned previously in this article.

If you want currency values to convert automatically based on the Currency format, you must create a custom Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications procedure to provide that functionality. This article does not provide that procedure.

Date/Time Format
The Time tab in the Regional Settings tool determines the long formats and the short formats of Date/Time values and of Time separators. For example, the English (United States) Short Date format is M/D/YY, and the French (Canadian) Short Date format is YY-MM-DD. When you use regional settings, other than English (United States), consider the following points:  In Visual Basic for Applications, you must use U.S./English Date formats when you create SQL statements. For additional information about formatting dates, regardless of regional settings, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

210069 ACC2000: How to Format Dates as U.S. Dates Regardless of Regional Settings

 In the query grid, you can use International Date formats. Regional settings do not control the Medium Date format (MM-DDD-YY). The Medium Date format is determined by the language that you use in Access. For example, if you have a database on computer A that runs French Microsoft Access, and then you copy that database to computer B that runs English (U.S.) Microsoft Access, the Medium Date format is different on computer B.

Number Format
Use only English Number formats with Number functions on a computer that is running SQL. If you use non-English formats, some functions may not work. The following is an example:

  SELECT CDbl(0,09) AS Field1 FROM Employees;

Notice the comma that is used instead of a period (.) as the Decimal separator. When this occurs, you may receive the following error message from the SQL statement:

  Wrong number of arguments used with function in query expression 'CDbl(0,09)'.

Note When you change your regional settings, the Database Sort Order on the menu changes to match the country that you select. You can see this on the General tab in the Options dialog box on the Tools menu. However, to update the existing databases to the new sort order, you must run the Compact Database utility on the existing databases.

Additional query words: globalization international int'l localization localisation ACC2000

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