Re: How Can I set a non standard date format?

clark(at)knowideas(dot)com wrote:
> Hi All Esteemed Developers,
>
> I have a requirement to have dates like ddmmmyyy. ie: 03MAR07
>
> I want to be able to have dates returned from a query in this format
> so that I can use passthrough queries from Access. I know I can use
> to_char to format the date anyway I want, but this causes the column
> to appear as a text datatype instead of a date datatype.
>
> I am exporting the data to Excel, and the columns that have dates
> formatted as text do not sort properly. That is why I want the column
> to remain a date type.

Have you tried formatting the dates as yyyymmdd? It will allow excel to
sort the dates properly even if it sees them as numbers or text.

My guess is that you may find it easier to send dates out as a standard
dd/mm/yyyy and have excel format them to display any way you want.
Select the excel column with the dates and goto format cells if you
select custom you can set the display format to ddmmmyyy or any other
display you may think of.

> In Oracle I could use NLS_TIMESTAMP_FORMAT to accomplish this. But I
> cannot find a way to use PGDATESTYLE or anything else to to the same
> thing.
>
> Any ideas?
>
> best regards,
> billc
>
>
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Shane Ambler
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