Knowledge Base

PRB: 12/30/1899 Appears as a Blank Date in Microsoft Access

Article ID: 150433

Article Last Modified on 6/17/1999

APPLIES TO

This article was previously published under Q150433

SYMPTOMS

If a Visual FoxPro date field contains a value 12/30/1899, then it will display as 12:00:00AM, a blank date, in Microsoft Access.

CAUSE

The FoxPro ODBC driver returns 0 for an empty date instead of NULL. In Microsoft Access and any other VBA/DAO product, dates and times are stored as the number of days since 12/30/1899, which is day 0, and time values are stored as fractions of a day. The default formatting for date/time data is: 
  Data            Display
  ----            -------
  3.0             date only:      1/2/1901
  3.25            date and time:  1/2/1901 6:00:00AM
  0.25            time only:      6:00:00AM
  0.0             time only:      12:00:00AM
  NULL            blank:
As you can see, the 0.0 case is a special case of "time only".

STATUS

This behavior is by design.

MORE INFORMATION

Steps to Reproduce Behavior

  1. Create and execute the following Visual FoxPro program: 
          CREATE TABLE ztest (dfield d)
      APPEND BLANK
      REPLACE dfield WITH {12/30/1899}
      USE
  2. Create a Visual FoxPro data source called ztest to the free table directory where the table ztest was created.
  3. Start Microsoft Access. From the File menu, choose Open Database. Select and open a Microsoft Access database.
  4. From the File menu, choose Get External Data, and select Linked Tables. Then from Files of type list, select ODBC Databases().
  5. Select the ztest data source. Select the ztest table, and click OK.
  6. Click the Cancel button to not select a unique identifier.
  7. Double-click ztest in the database.

Notice that in the data sheet view the date displays as 12:00:00 AM, which is a blank date.

Keywords: kbinterop kbprb KB150433


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