The custom date command requires a format string. This consists of one or more codes; the formatting codes are preceded by a percent sign (%).

Characters that do not begin with % are used unchanged. The formatting codes are listed below.

Standard Formatting Codes

%a

Abbreviated day of the week.

%A

Day of the week.

%b

Abbreviated month.

%B

Month.

%d

Day of the month as digits with leading zeros for single-digit days (01 - 31).

%m

Month as digits with leading zeros for single-digit months (01 - 12).

%y

Year represented only by the last two digits. A leading zero is added for single-digit years (00 - 99).

%Y

Year with century.

Less Frequent Formatting Codes

%j

Day of year as decimal number (001 - 366).

%U

Week of year as decimal number, with Sunday as first day of week (00 - 53).

%w

Weekday as decimal number (0 - 6; Sunday is 0).

%W

Week of year as decimal number, with Monday as first day of week (00 - 53).

%%

Percent sign.

Time Formatting Codes

Note IconThe only database fields that have valid time values are those in the Journal table.

%H

Hour in 24-hour format (00 – 23).

%I

Hour in 12-hour format (01 – 12).

%M

Minute as decimal number (00 – 59).

%p

AM / PM time indicator (this is determined by your operating system regional settings).

Addendum

The # flag may prefix any formatting code. In that case, the meaning of the format code is changed as follows.

%#a, %#A, %#b, %#B, %#p, %#%

# flag is ignored.

%#d, %#H, %#I, %#j, %#m, %#M, %#U, %#w, %#W, %#y, %#Y

Remove leading zeros (if any).

Examples

Assuming that today is 20/05/19 (UK format)

CUSTOMDATE "%B %#d, %Y"  would generate "May 20, 2019"
CUSTOMDATE "%A, %d %b, %Y" would generate "Monday, 20 May, 2019"
CUSTOMDATE_FIELD "Last Given" "%B %y" would generate "May 19"
CUSTOMDATE_FIELD "JournalDateEdit" "%d %b %y %#I:%M %p" would generate 20 May 19 4:23 PM
CUSTOMDATE_FIELD "JournalDateEdit" "%d %b %y %H:%I" would generate 20 Jun 19 16:23