Knowledge Base

BUG: DateTimePicker's CustomFormat May Be Ignored

Article ID: 187233

Article Last Modified on 5/13/2003

Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 Learning Edition
Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 Professional Edition
Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 Enterprise Edition

This article was previously published under Q187233

SYMPTOMS

You have a DataTimePicker control's CustomFormat property set, but when you set the Format property to dtpCustom, the CustomFormat is not used.

RESOLUTION

When you set a DateTimePicker's Format property to dtpCustom, you must follow this by assigning the CustomFormat property, even if it already contains a valid format string. This assignment to CustomFormat may be a new string value or it may be assigned to itself.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a bug in the Microsoft products listed at the beginning of this article.

MORE INFORMATION

Steps to Reproduce Behavior

In a new Standard EXE project. Form1 is created by default. From the Projects menu, select Components, check "Microsoft Windows Common Controls-2 6.0," and click OK.
Add two CommandButtons and a DTPicker control to Form1.
Enter a custom format into the DTPicker control's CustomFormat property. For this example, use 'Today is' MMM d, yyy.

Add the following code to the Form's Module:

      Private Sub Command1_Click()
         DTPicker1.Format = dtpCustom
      End Sub

      Private Sub Command2_Click()
         DTPicker1.Format = dtpCustom
         DTPicker1.CustomFormat = DTPicker1.CustomFormat
      End Sub

Run the Project and Click Command1. Note that the CustomFormat is not used and the date is displayed as a short date.
Click Command2 and note that the CustomFormat is used and the date is displayed in the form: Today is May 5, 1998.

REFERENCES

For additional information, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

186424 : INFO: DateTimePicker CustomFormat Is Case-Sensitive

Additional query words: kbDSupport kbDSD kbCtrl kbUsage kbCommon kbVBp600

Keywords: kbbug KB187233