Displaying Dates in any format on Reports

This is a reposting of an article I originally wrote on my Developing for Dynamics GP blog.

Over the years, I have seen a huge amount of effort and multiple calculated fields to format a date field on a report into a desired format that is something other than the default short date format, usually DD/MM/YYYY or MM/DD/YYYY depending on country (as defined in the control panel).

While you have to admire the efforts that people will go to to get a date displayed in a desired format, it frustrates me that so much effort goes into something that could be so quickly and easily achieved with the RW_DateToString() user defined Report Writer (RW) function.

The RW_DateToString() function is one of a suite of functions that I developed back in 2002 and got added to the core Dynamics.dic application dictionary for versions 7.0 onwards. For details on the other RW functions added, see the post on this blog in the more information section below.

To use the RW_DateToString() function, follow the steps below:

1. Create a string calculated field
2. Select the Functions Tab
3. Select User-Defined
4. Select Core: System
5. Select Function: RW_DateToString
6. Click Add
7. Select the Fields tab
8. Locate the date field you want displayed
9. Click Add
10. Select the Constants tab
11. Select Type: String
12. Enter the Constant as the desired date format template (see below)
13. Click Add
14. Click OK

The final Calculated Expression should be something like:

FUNCTION_SCRIPT(  RW_DateToString  Date  “mmmm DD, YYYY”  )

For example:

For today’s date the format string “mmmm DD, YYYY” will produce “August 16, 2010”.

The date format template string is a string constant which describes to the RW_DateToString() function how to display the date.  Any text can be contained in the string and the following placeholder characters will be substituted with the appropriate:

Placeholder Characters	Date Component Format
ddd	day of week as 3 letters
dddd	day of week in full
N	day of year
NN	day of year (padded)
D	day of month
DD	day of month (padded)
M	month of year
MM	month of year (padded)
mmm	month of year as 3 letters
mmmm	month of year in full
YY	year of date (2 digits)
YYYY	year of date (4 digits)

Note: If you want to change the language of the days of the week or the months of the year, please use the Modifier to change Message Resources IDs 12201 onwards and 18618 onwards respectively. These messages are used elsewhere in the application, so changing them here will affect more than just the RW_DateToString() function.

For more information see the posts below:

• This blog: Using the built-in Report Writer Functions
• DynamicsGP.ie blog: International date formats in Report Writer

I hope this saves you lots of time. Enjoy.

David

This article was originally posted on the Developing for Dynamics GP Blog and has been reposted on https://www.winthropdc.com/blog.