[Solved] Date not coming out in Reports - only numbers

[MelanieMac]

I'm new to using Open Office and have started a database and tried to run a report. The report comes out fine except for the field for "Invoice Date". I have it formatted for MM/DD/YY but all that comes out in the report is a 5 digit number for each one? Heeelp?

[Villeroy]

Same issue in all office components, spreadsheets, Writer tables and fields, form controls. The number is a day number counting days since day zero which is 1899-12-30. Just format the table cells or the controls as date and you will see the date representation for the same value.

[MelanieMac]

I have the field formatted as a date field (category) and it gives me the MM/DD/YY in the table, but when the report comes out, the date is in the 5 digit number. I opened the report in edit mode but can't see how to change the field for that field in there?

[Villeroy]

Unless you were using the Sun Report Builder extension (you don't mention), you should have an ordinary Writer table.
Put the focus in a cell in the date column
menu:Table>Select>Column
menu:Table>Number Format...
Save the embedded report document, close, save the database. Start the report.

[MelanieMac]

Ok, I'm feeling really stupid right now.....don't know anything about the Sun Report Builder extension - I just used the wizard to create the report. I opened the database to do what you said, clicked on one of the cells containing the date field, but not sure where to go from there? menu: Table>Select>Column...not sure where to find this?

[Villeroy]

Formatting is just an attribute of the currently viewed values. Formatting attributes never change any of your values. Never ever. When you choose some formatting attribute for the table grid you specify how you want to see the dates in that table grid. It won't affect the data nor other views on your data in forms, reports or other places.
Open your report for editing as you did before. You see an ordinary Writer document with a table and some placeholder content in that table.
menu:Table>Select>Column is definitively part of the Writer menu when you focussed some table cell.
menu:Table>Number Format as well

If you don't know the Sun Report Builder, you don't use it since you would have installed this tool which creates another type of reports.

[MelanieMac]

Thank you so much for your help....I've somehow managed to fix it and not sure how?? lol I deleted the report I had and created another, asking it to modify the report on the last wizard step and when I did that, the date came out right!! So I saved it and it's all good!

[vinman33pd]

So this is a coupla years later. Thanks for this post, it saved me a lot of trouble.

Now... If anyone from the developer community actually READS this stuff......

It would be real super nice if the Report function simply pulled the Field Attributes from the Table the field is coming from so we don't have to RE-SPECIFY formatting information after we already specified it when we designed the Table. Same goes for Queries if they don't already do that (but it seems they do). That way, if you pull a report from a Table OR a Querry, you know that the field attributes will come along for the ride into the report. Just seems to make sense, don't it?

[sopal2]

Hi,

I'm having the same problem--the dates in the form only show up as 5 digit numbers in the report. I tried to follow the instructions in the previous posts, but when I'm in the report, I can't change any of the number settings in the table...Is there another way to do it? I tried to fix it on two different databases I created and it didn't work.

Thanks

[Villeroy]

So this is a coupla years later. Thanks for this post, it saved me a lot of trouble.

Now... If anyone from the developer community actually READS this stuff......

Developers ignore all forums. They seem to utilize some ego-search tools. As soon as you mention certain names such as Italo Vignoli (LibreOffice) or Rob Weir (OpenOffice) you can be sure that they will be notified at least.

The user channel they actually read and respond to is a mailing list. Subscribe to users-subscribe@openoffice.apache.org
Then there is the bug tracking system. [Tutorial] Reporting bugs or suggestions. This issue is a known one: https://issues.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=117951