[AccessD] Access dates (was: Number vs text data type)

Gustav Brock gustav at cactus.dk
Sun Oct 19 03:34:47 CDT 2003


Hi Stuart

This was because of the Lotus 1-2-3 leap year 1900 bug which Excel
mimics but the Access developers chose to ignore (thank you):

  http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q181370

/gustav


> .. just Format(0,"dd mm yyyy") ..
>> which is December 30, 1899.  Negative numbers are days prior to that day.
>> 
>> If you replace the 0 with a 2, you get January 1, 1900 and if you use 367, 
>> you get the first day of the 20th century, January 1, 1901.  There's 
>> Microsoft logic shining as it often does.
>> 
> That strikes me quite often when I'm doing date manipulation.  I've 
> tried to see the reasoning behind that start date. So far, I can't 
> see it at all. Can anyone come with  *any* logical reason?

> Especially when you consider that Excel uses a more logical scheme 
> where Day 1 is "1 Jan 1900"

> Still in some ways Access is better than Excel which returns "O Jan 
> 1900" for Day 0 and an error for negative numbers :-)



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