Regional Settings Help

[bjchantry]

I live in South Africa and as in most of Europe and Africa we write our date dd/mm/yyyy. Why won't Pocket PC 2002 let me change it in regional settings, I have two choices, yy/mm/dd and yyyy/mm/dd. On desktop versions you can highlight that area and type in the order you want but unless I am doing something wrong it won't let me. It let's me choose the type of separator, whoopie, but the order is wrong and it is confusing when you are used to dd/mm. Any ideas anyone? Thanks.

[trachy]

What region do you have selected on the first tab (region)? If you change the region first, it should automatically set the date format to dd/mm/yy, as is the custom for South Africa.

[bjchantry]

Thanks for the tip, unfortunately I already have English (South Africa) selected for the Region, that was the first thing I checked.

[trachy]

Not sure what else to tell you, other than perform a soft reset. I tested out my suggestion on my 3835, and it does switch back and forth as I thought it would.

The wierd thing is that on my Date tab the Short date drop-down menu shows my options as being 'yy/MM/dd' or 'yyyy-MM-dd'. I've never seen the date written in that form before. Long date option (only one available) is normal - 'dd MMMM yyyy'.

[bjchantry]

Not sure what else to tell you, other than perform a soft reset. I tested out my suggestion on my 3835, and it does switch back and forth as I thought it would.

The wierd thing is that on my Date tab the Short date drop-down menu shows my options as being 'yy/MM/dd' or 'yyyy-MM-dd'. I've never seen the date written in that form before. Long date option (only one available) is normal - 'dd MMMM yyyy'.

When you say it switched back and forth, is that with the US setting? Back and forth between what? What you have on your Date Tab is the same as me, I can switch between yy/MM/dd or yyyy-MM-dd, but you are right, we don't write the date like that at all.

[trachy]

When you say it switched back and forth, is that with the US setting? Back and forth between what? What you have on your Date Tab is the same as me, I can switch between yy/MM/dd or yyyy-MM-dd, but you are right, we don't write the date like that at all.

Yes, I was switching back and forth between the US and SA settings.

I love how they give you a drop-down menu when there's no choice to be made. Funny, the nuances you can find if you dig a little.

[bjchantry]

Well since we are so similar to the United Kingdom I thought, let's try English (United Kingdom) and sure enough, they have the date formats just the way I want them. Then the currency symbol was wrong but fortunately it allowed me to change that from the Pound symbol to R. It appears perhaps noone from the Microsoft CE/PPC team has ever been to South Africa and seen the date written, ho hum 8O . Once again we have to be creative to overcome MSFT's shortcomings.

[trachy]

Well, at least you were able to work around the problem. It is ridiculous though.

Imagine the shortcomings there must be in the Arabic and Asian versions of PPC if they can't get this stuff right in their native alphabet.

[Stephen Beesley]

Well since we are so similar to the United Kingdom I thought, let's try English (United Kingdom) and sure enough, they have the date formats just the way I want them. Then the currency symbol was wrong but fortunately it allowed me to change that from the Pound symbol to R. It appears perhaps noone from the Microsoft CE/PPC team has ever been to South Africa and seen the date written, ho hum 8O . Once again we have to be creative to overcome MSFT's shortcomings.

I have had the same problem with regional settings for both Australia and Ireland - Looks like the Microsoft PPC team needs to get out more!

Goldtee