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 · Accepted solution]

Hi!

There are multiple uservoices open for this here including

https://microsoftforms.uservoice.com/forums/386451-welcome-to-microsoft-forms-suggestion-box/suggest...

https://microsoftforms.uservoice.com/forums/386451-welcome-to-microsoft-forms-suggestion-box/suggest...

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

[#3]

@ChrisHoardMVP Wow, hard to believe that oversight got through testing.  I have definitely thrown my vote in.  I thought I'd overlooked a setting somewhere.

[#4]

@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

[#5]

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-fo...

If I don’t hear back I will test tomorrow to once back in the office.

Best, Chris

[#6]

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@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 Gallardos

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@RobElliott   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.   

[#7]

@ChrisHoardMVP It's definitely got me a bit confused, I appreciate your help.

[#8]

@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/suggest...

[#9]

@PaulaSillars 

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!

[#10]

Forms dates are due to your browser language/locale settings.  (Every browser describes and scopes these differently.) 

[#11]

@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!

[#12]

@PaulaSillars It's a perennial problem. I have suggested to a couple of IT departments that they use group policy to set up all the standard browsers on provisioned computers with English(Australia) locale rather than default US but none have followed up :-(.   It would save a lot of tickets to helpdesks.

[#13]

@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!

[#14]

@Paul_Limbers 

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.

[#15]

@Mike Williams oh okay, it seems to work from me on the front end when submitting the form? 

[#16]

@Paul_Limbers The date format you see is a function of your local browser/environment. It cannot be set by the form creator.

[#17]

@jcjcjc thanks it worked

[#18]

@RobElliott 

If you use the Forms with a direct link, it will follow the format of the default language on the browsers.
In Australia, when you install Chrome or the new Edge, the browsers will have US English as default.
So we changed all pcs Browsers to Australian English.... but..... If you try to use the form in a modern sharepoint site webpart, it will only show with the american format, no matter what settings you have in admin, site settings, etc. 

[#19]

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.

[#20]

@APC-andre Yes - it's extremely frustrating to set a sit collection's regional settings to something other than US English only to find that most of the dates rendered inside the collection ignore the regional setting.

Re the new Edge. I filed a bug about it ignoring both the user locale and the language settings of the existing default browser at install time. I received a notification that a fix for this is coming. However this is only the tip of the iceberg in terms of date issues in Microsoft Online products. If the environments are simply going to ignore your settings, then what can you do.