| Microsoft Year 2000 Readiness Disclosure
& Resource Center |
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| Updating Your Date Settings for the Year
2000 |
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In anticipation
of the new millennium, you can change the date settings in your
operating system to help avoid date mistakes in your Microsoft
Office software. For example, you can check the accuracy of dates as
you enter them if the format for the date displays four-digit
instead of two-digit years. In other words, by changing your
operating system date settings, when you enter 2/23/01, you can
force your Office applications to display the date as 2/23/2001.
The next
release of OfficeùOffice 2000ùuses a new feature of Windows« 98 (and
Windows 2000, which is yet to be released) that addresses the entry
of dates. Currently, when you enter a two-digit year in a date,
Microsoft Excel, for example, assumes that the year falls within the
21st century if the digits are in the range 00 to 29 (2000 through
2029). If you enter a number from 30 to 99, the dates are assumed to
fall within the 20th century (1930 through 1999). With Windows 98
you can change the way two-digit years are interpreted; that is,
instead of interpreting two-digit years between 1930 and 2029, you
can set the shortcut time period (100 year window) to 1950 to 2049.
Change the Default Date Format to Display Four-Digit
Years
- On the Windows Start menu, point to Settings, and then click Control
Panel.
- Double click Regional Settings (or Regional Options if you are using Microsoft Windows 2000),
and then click the Date tab.
- In the Short Date Style list, click a format that uses four digits
for the year ("yyyy").
Change the Way Two-Digit Years are Interpreted
This
procedure changes the way two-digit years are interpreted by some
applications running under Windows 98 and Windows 2000.
- On the Windows Start menu, point to Settings, and then click Control
Panel.
- Double click Regional Settings (or Regional Options if you are using Microsoft Windows 2000),
and then click the Date tab.
- In the When a two-digit year
is entered, interpret as a
year between box, change the
upper-limit for the century.
As you change the upper-limit
year, the lower-limit year automatically changes.
Note Both Access 97 and Visual
Basic« for Applications for Office 97 are affected by the changes to
the two-digit year interpretation. Other Office 97 applications are
not affected by this procedure. This procedure
will affect other applications, however, such as Office 2000.
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