| Microsoft Year 2000 Readiness Disclosure
& Resource Center |
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| Preparing Office Solutions for the Year
2000 |
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Examining
Report Presentation
Most
custom solutions have some type of output that goes to format that
people can read. This output can be in the form of HTML pages,
Microsoft Word documents, Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, Microsoft
Access reports, and many others.
Every
piece of information generated by your application for external
consumption should show year information correctly. Each output you
generate must be tested to ensure that, where necessary, all four
digits of the year are included. The reason for this is two-fold.
First, it allows the developer to spot-check the output of the
application to ensure that the correct century is being used.
Second, it ensures that whatever application or process uses the
data doesn't have to assume the centuryùitÆs indelibly implanted in
the data itself by the serving application.
Examine
each output format to see where dates are being used. In most cases,
you should ensure that the full four digits of the year are being
displayed.
Remember
that changing one or more date fields in an output format to support
four digit years may result in expansion of the space used on the
page. This can cause the output to wrap differentlyùespecially when
the date is used in the header of a report. Be sure to preview each
output format you modify to ensure it still fits within the defined
margins.
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