Date Formatting

[PaulaSillars]

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.

[#2]

@Mike Williams 

There is a solution to the forms on the modern SharePoint sites.

you will have to use the embed Web Part with iframe and change the browser language to UK/Australia/etc English.
Just have to play with the height.

"<iframe width="800px" height="1500px" src="https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=FORMID&amp;embed=true" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="" style="border: none; max-width: 100%; max-height: 100%;"> </iframe>​​​" 

[#3]

@APC-andre That is not a solution: changing the browser locale is required for every Forms deployment, and is non-trivial.    [NB language and locale are distinct properties: the former relates to UI text, and the former to measured units like time, distance and temperature]

There are also parts of SharePoint that respect neither the site collection locale nor the browser locale setting.

[#4]

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."

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/msoffice_sharepoint-mso_win10-mso_o365b/forms-dat...

[#5]

@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?

[#6]

@Mike Williams 

Hi Mike - the opinion is that of a Microsoft agent - are you saying she's wrong? I think you may be right.

I have set the locale settings on both Forms and on the Sharepoint site - dates in each display correctly (for the most part - Sharepoint seems a bit inconsistent in this regard).

It is only when the Form is embedded in Sharepoint that it shows incorrectly.

Another user in the thread I linked to has commented that (bold my own):-

Also SharePoint is completely inconsistent with dates. Even if you go into Site Settings and set your locale to English(UK) or English(Australia) so that most dates are formatted as dd/mm/yyyy, you can go to your listing of subsites (_layouts/15/viewlsts.aspx?view=15) and see that all the creation dates are mm/dd/yyyy. There are lots of places where mm/dd/yyyy seems to be hard-coded through SharePoint.

This is the answer most consistent with what I have observed.

[#7]

@Samuel Walker  The Microsoft agent wrote "I assume" and I generally find their assumptions around international issues to be poorly-based. I at least have a lot of direct experience and evidence which I have raised with Microsoft directly. The more people that do that the better. There are too many old and well-supported User Voice tickets around international issues which are not getting Microsoft attention.

[#8]

@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.

[#9]

@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.

[#10]

@Christopher Hoard 

@Microsoft

Any update please?!

[#11]

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.

[#12]

@tjgreen0 

When setting up laptops and pcs for new staff, we use Australian English as default language.
I will test the forms in tablets.

[#13]

@APC-andre We do too but Forms has been the only app we have ever found that also requires it in the browser settings.  We set it in Windows and had also set it for every location in O365 but the browser wasn't one we had ever required before and looks like this has caught a lot of people out.

[#14]

Best response was to ask Micrsoft to fix it but that was 3 years ago! Surely there has to be an update

[#15]

@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)

[#16]

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?

[#17]

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?

[#18]

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.

[#19]

@Baron_Greenback USA's stubbornness in using universally accepted standards strikes again.