Editing a date item is not in the same format as the column format

spauliszyn

Hi,

Most of the time I use a different date format than the standard US default. When I edit a cell that contains a date, it is converted first to the default format. This makes it difficult to make small adjustment manually because the day, month and year is in a different order than what I see all around. See this example where I have double-clicked on the second item and SS has converted it to some other format before I get to edit it.

I am faster at the keyboard than clicking around on a calendar pop-up. But having to switch gears every time is really silly. All other mainstream apps let you edit the cell in the chosen format.

Any way to fix this?

Pauline J

@spauliszyn

Hello!

I work with dates quite a bit, and in different formats. The simple fix is to select your date column, then select the date format icon on the toolbar. The drop-down will give you lots of different display options, regardless of how you enter the date. You can also change your date display in your personal settings if you want it to always display a certain way. But I have not done that.

I hope this helped!

spauliszyn

@Pauline J, Thanks for sharing but maybe I am not clear on the 'problem'.

I know about the date formats that you are showing in your post. Also, Smart Sheets is smart enough to understand if you "enter" a date in several other formats.

But when you "edit" a date by double clicking a cell, as I am showing in my post, SmartSheets automatically converts the date to the US standard when regardless of the customer's preferred choice in "personal settings". As you can see here I have my preference set to Canada with a date format as "yy-mm-dd" and yet it is still converted to "mm-dd-yy" when I edit a date cell.

Also, the problem is I don't want "yy-mm-dd" as it's just as ambiguous as "mm-dd-yy". My real preference is either "yyyy-mm-dd" for general and "ddd, mmm-dd" for near dates (like due dates). But that is a topic for a whole other post ;).

Pauline J

@spauliszyn — your second post helped to shed more light on your dilemma. Because US is my default, perhaps that makes a difference in how SS is behaving? I was able to select the YYYY-MM-DD (above, in gray) and it worked well for me, even when editing — you might want to reach out to support; I have had some quirky issues with other things that no one can explain! 😉

Best to you!