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WD97: Year 2000 Date Parsing Improvements in SR-2

The information in this article applies to:

Microsoft Word 97 for Windows, Service Release 2 (SR-2)

SUMMARY

Microsoft Office 97 Service Release 2 (SR-2) improves the way Word handles dates. Specifically, SR-2 makes it easier to do the following in Word:

Work with dates that use single digits (for example 1/1/0)

Sort dates that use 00 for the year

Use dates in a document saved in RTF format

MORE INFORMATION

Working with Dates That Use Single Digits

If you set the Regional Settings in Control Panel to a non-US date format, such as Year/Month/Day, Microsoft Word 97 SR-2 will now correctly parse single digit years around the year 2000.

Sorting Dates That Use 00 for the Year

If you set the Regional Settings in Control Panel to a non-US date format, such as Year/Month/Day, Microsoft Word 97 SR-2 will now correctly parse dates that have a zero for the month or day. Pre-SR-2 versions of Microsoft Word would give erroneous results in this situation.

Using Dates in a Document Saved in RTF Format

If you set the Regional Settings in Control Panel to a short date format, such as mm/dd/yy, and then save a document containing a 2-digit date value, such as "11/15/01," as Rich text Format (RTF), Microsoft Word 97 SR-2 will write out custom date properties as 4 digits (instead of two) in the RTF file. Pre-SR-2 versions of Microsoft Word would write custom date properties out in RTF as "11/15/01." SR-2 correctly writes it out as "11/15/2001."

When Is Date Parsing Used?

Microsoft Word parses dates whenever it performs operations on dates. Examples include:

Sorting dates in a table.

Applying a date formatting picture switch to merge fields, quote fields, or input to a form field.

Linking bookmarked text to a date type custom property.

String to date operations in WordBasic.

REFERENCES

For more information about the year 2000, please see the following articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Q171286 WD6X: Find File Fails with Dates Beyond Year 2000

Q110995 WD6X: How to Set a Default DATE Field Format in Word 6.0

Q85557 File Manager Shows Garbled Date for Year 2000 or Later

Q149582 Windows NT Will Correctly Handle the Year 2000

For additional or updated Year 2000 information, please see the following Microsoft Web page:

http://www.microsoft.com/year2000/

Additional query words: year 2000

Keywords          : kbdta word97 
Version           : 
Platform          : WINDOWS 
Issue type        : kbinfo