Forum Discussion
Date Formatting
Does anyone know a way to switch the date format to dd/MM/yyyy in Forms? We have numerous business uses for Forms, and have signed up for the Forms Pro preview, but not being able to change the date format is an issue for us.
- Hi!
There are multiple uservoices open for this here including
https://microsoftforms.uservoice.com/forums/386451-welcome-to-microsoft-forms-suggestion-box/suggestions/37496209-date-format
https://microsoftforms.uservoice.com/forums/386451-welcome-to-microsoft-forms-suggestion-box/suggestions/18409984-allow-uk-date-format-in-forms-please
Would recommend you vote for them - fast becoming one of the top requests and annoyances about Forms. I think Microsoft will pick this up in time.
Hope that answers your question!
Best, Chris
I know this is an old thread, but as someone new to forms, I spent a frustrating 30 minutes trying to figure out how to get the date format to show as dd/mm/yyyy. I followed instructions on changing my regional settings in Office 365 to no avail but eventually figured out what the problem was on my PC.
I use 2 browsers, Chrome and Chromium, I opened a shared form in Chrome, date format was in dd/mm/yyyy. As I'm just starting to learn about forms, I decided to recreate the form as practice - but on my form, the date format was m/d/yyyy. No regional settings with office would change this.
What was the difference? I was creating my own form in the Chromium browser, the one I was copying was opened in Chrome. If I opened my one in Chrome, date format was dd/mm/yyyy. Open it or the shared one in Chromium - date format m/d/yyyy.
It was the browser's regional settings that were giving me the US date format!!
Went into Chromium settings, People, Advanced, changed language from US to English (United Kingdom), removed the US language and now my date format was showing dd/mm/yyyy.
I still think it's a bit silly not to simply have an option to change the format within forms, but hopefully this will help someone else having the same issue!
- Hi!
There are multiple uservoices open for this here including
https://microsoftforms.uservoice.com/forums/386451-welcome-to-microsoft-forms-suggestion-box/suggestions/37496209-date-format
https://microsoftforms.uservoice.com/forums/386451-welcome-to-microsoft-forms-suggestion-box/suggestions/18409984-allow-uk-date-format-in-forms-please
Would recommend you vote for them - fast becoming one of the top requests and annoyances about Forms. I think Microsoft will pick this up in time.
Hope that answers your question!
Best, ChrisChrisHoardMVP Wow, hard to believe that oversight got through testing. I have definitely thrown my vote in. I thought I'd overlooked a setting somewhere.
ChrisHoardMVP Please vote for this so hopefully, it reaches to thousands and MS team consider it
https://microsoftforms.uservoice.com/forums/386451-welcome-to-microsoft-forms-suggestion-box/suggestions/18603478-ability-to-change-date-format-to-correspond-to-the- It turned out the answer was the actually in the browser. We use Chrome as our default and had to set Australia as our location within Chrome itself. Then forms allowed non-US dates.
PaulaSillars this must be something to do with the regional settings made by Office 365 global admins because all our dates in Microsoft Forms are in dd/mm/yyyy format by default.
Rob
Los Gallardos
RobElliott wrote:PaulaSillars this must be something to do with the regional settings made by Office 365 global admins because all our dates in Microsoft Forms are in dd/mm/yyyy format by default.
Rob
Los GallardosRobElliott I am the global admin and I don't see anything in the Admin Center for regional settings other than the location of my tenant which is set to Australia which is correct.
Other applications including Sharepoint and OneDrive have the correct date formats and language settings, so far the only app with the US date formats issue is Forms.
- If you have the forms with a direct link to them or inside a classic sharepoint site, you will have to change the browser default language in settings.
If you try to use a form inside a modern sharepoint site with a Forms webpart, forget about it, it will only show with US date format.
Forms dates are due to your browser language/locale settings. (Every browser describes and scopes these differently.)
Mike Williams - wow this is the first reference I have seen to it being the browser and I can confirm that my Chrome was set to US instead of Australia and switching it fixed it.
Forms has been the only thing we have ever found that uses this (so far).
Thank you very much!
- Hmm may have been introduced recently if that is the case may be locale settings in the user profile too
https://support.office.com/en-us/article/change-your-display-language-and-time-zone-in-office-365-for-business-6f238bff-5252-441e-b32b-655d5d85d15b
If I don’t hear back I will test tomorrow to once back in the office.
Best, ChrisChrisHoardMVP It's definitely got me a bit confused, I appreciate your help.
- Best response was to ask Micrsoft to fix it but that was 3 years ago! Surely there has to be an update
DannyVLRS We also use dd/mm/yyyy date format and have no problems unless the form is embedded in a Forms web part on a SharePoint page when it asks the user to enter the date as m/dd/yy. So we don't put the form in a web part but have the full form open in a new tab.
Rob
Los Gallardos
Intranet, SharePoint and Power Platform Manager (and classic 1967 Morris Traveller driver)
- It's now four years on, and I'm still seeing this issue with Microsoft Forms displaying the mm/dd/yyyy format even though I have selected the zone as Australia, the date format at dd/mm/yyyy.
Is there going to be a fix soon for the 200 other countries in the world that don't use American date format? I have a similar issue, all browser settings are to UK, all site settings are to UK and though the front-end form reads DD/MM/YYYY, the excel export is MM/DD/YYYY - very frustrating, and totally unacceptable - no such issues exist with google forms... With no clear solution to this basic yet pretty fundamental issue, it looks like we may have to re-consider what we use going forwards.
Just another example of how Google is "Edge"ing MS out of the cloud-based solutions market I guess.Baron_Greenback USA's stubbornness in using universally accepted standards strikes again.
PaulaSillars you can switch this by changing the primary language of the form. See screenshots below:
1. Click the three dot menu and select "Multilingual"
2. Select "English (United Kingdom)" as the Primary Language
All set!
That doesn't change the date formatting. It only changes the wording of some app-generated text in the forms. It's more akin to the proofing language settings in Word/Office that are independent of the locale settings that determine date etc.
Mike Williams oh okay, it seems to work from me on the front end when submitting the form?
Hi there - this isn't the answer. The problem apparently is caused by the location of the Forms servers:-
"We took a long time to reply because we also tested at our end. After we changed the time zone and date format in Delve, then we checked the date format in Forms. The date format in Forms didn’t change to UK nor the Forms Web Part.
As the data of Forms are store in servers in the United States, I assume that is the reason why we can’t change the format even we change the time zone or region."
Samuel Walker Hi Samuel. The linked " I assume that is the reason" opinion is incorrect. In Australia all our Microsoft data is hosted here and that has no impact on Forms dates. It's all about the browser settings which i have tested extensively across Chrome, Firefox and Edge. Have you checked yours?
PaulaSillars the form will automatically adjust the date settings depending on the browsers location.
If your location is the states, it'll come up as M/DD/YYYY
If your location is the UK, it'll come up as DD/MM/YYYY
Nothing else is needed other than the person filling in the form needs to be in the right location.
You can test this by using Incognito vs Standard browsing to see the differences.
drjpcsjohn This is NOT correct. The form has no way of using location information. The location of the user, the browser or the Microsoft data centre have no bearing on the form display. It's all to do with the browser language settings.
- My forms show dates in DD/MM/YYYY - on both the question & the responses - but when I open in Excel from Forms it turns into MM/DD/YYYY
All my settings are UK - browser, forms, 365, local machine, unicode - everything I can find
Normal excel works fine with uk settings - its just when opening from Forms
How do I get my UK format into excel forms?
