Change to system date format (Q Mac Canada)

Robin Whyte

I want to change my Mac system date format to dd/mm/yyyy e.g 18th March 2021, to use with Excel etc, but makes my Quicken register dates nonsense. Is there a way of doing this?

Quicken Francisco

Hello @Robin Whyte

Thank you for reaching out on the community and telling us about your issue. Is it making your register sorting mismatch everywhere after changing it? When you click on the date column how does it organize everything? 

Once you get a chance let us know some more details and we'll see what we can try to fix the issue you're having..

Thanks,

Quicken Francisco

Robin Whyte

The Mac system default for date entry is YYYYMMDD, while I prefer the English/UK DDMMYYYY, which is how I like to enter it in Excel. When I change the system date and time format for my Mac system, the dates in my Quicken registers (and reports) is changed to a string of numbers which are clearly derived from the date entries but are meaningless. If you then sort the 'dates' by these nonsense numbers of course the order is nonsense too. So obviously Quicken, like Excel, uses the system date format, but Quicken doesn't translate the dates for the new format if I change it. So my question is: if I change the system date format to help me with Excel, can I find a way to get Quicken to read it that way too?

Quicken Francisco

@Robin Whyte

Thanks for the update. By chance could you provide a screenshot of what it looks like for your register I'd like to see if I'm able to replicate the same issue you're having. I'll leave an article down below on how to take a screenshot as well.

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7663259/faq-how-do-i-post-a-screenshot-in-the-community-from-a-mac#latest

Once you get a chance I'll see if I'm able to replicate the issue as well. 

Thanks,
Quicken Francisco

Robin Whyte

Obviously I'm not inclined to post my interactions on Quicken Community, but this is how the date format looks after changing the system date settings. You have to sign out and restart for this to happen.

Robin Whyte

As a postscript, you'll see this list of dates is not that difficult to interpret, but the format is not right. My previous experience must have used a different date format. My question remains: can I change my system format to my liking without messing up Quicken?

Quicken_Tyka

Hello @Robin Whyte

Thank you for the screenshot and the additional details. I was able to successfully change the date format System Preferences > Language and Region.

It appears that the (-) or separator is missing from between the date and month. Can you please navigate to the Mac Apple and choose "System Preference" followed by "Language & Region."

Once there can you confirm you have a dash (-) after the date?


If you so, can you try using a ( / ) (slash) to separate the date? Please let us know what you find!

-Quicken Tyka

Robin Whyte

Thanks. Before I get into this again, I'm running fine on Quicken using the the Apple default, which I attach as a screen shot, though this messes up my other applications. There is no dash after the whole date, but a dash is used as a separator in the short date only, which you have replaced in your screen shot. This is the first time I noticed that Apple default actually uses a different order for short YYYY-MM-DD and long MM DD,YYYY dates. I'll get back to tinkering with this later, but I wanted to confirm you just want me to reproduce your date format as in your screen shot.