Finding OS short date format string in MS-Access/VBA

Question

I am looking for a VBA function that would return the current OS Short date format (ex: M/d/yyyy , dd-MMM-yy , yy/MM/dd , etc.) as a string. I have found such functions for MS Excel on related posts using Application.International , but they do not work with MS Access.

I want to be able to show the OS date format in my forms to avoid confusion if '08-11-11' is displayed, for example. Using CDate() , my dates are automatically formatted to whatever is set in Windows Date and time settings. However, users might not be aware of that.

Answer 1

Just pull it from the registry.

There are many ways, the way I use:

CreateObject("WScript.Shell").RegRead("HKCU\Control Panel\International\sShortDate")

Of course, one could use WinAPI to read the registry too.

If reading the registry is really undesirable, you can always format a distinct date, for example:

Format(#2/1/3333#, "Short Date")

And then parse the result to get the format