European date formats default option

Please let us have dates in European formats as a setting we can change at the account level, along with when we start our week (Monday). At present when you add a date column it:

  • outputs in the baffling month/day/year format and not day/month/year (or in ISO format for those who prefer that)
  • starts on a Sunday, which I find confusing (why split the weekend?)

I understand it’s the American way, but could there be an option to change the default date and calendar format?

55 Likes

I’d also really benefit from this, it seems like a very unnecessary place to add work for such a time-saving application.

Having to change every date field and every single date reference every time is somewhat unbearable!

8 Likes

Even worse, when syncing on cross-doc it imports the US format and you can’t change it (eg 6/2/2020 makes me think it’s the 6th Feb, not 2nd June). Please at least make ISO 8601 the default!

8 Likes

+10 for this.
same problem when syncing with google sheets

7 Likes

This is essential and an annoying oversight by companies ALL of the time as it generates a huge risk for all countries (ie everywhere that is not the USA).

Having to manually adjust every date field exposes the risk of 01/04/2020, is that January or April that the deliverable was due?

I don’t understand how America got to a middle endian date format in the first place.

9 Likes

+1 of course ! It’s a long wait for European people

5 Likes

Not only for Europeans, but for South Americans, and Latin Americans, and the rest of the world outside North America, I believe.

6 Likes

I agree that this is more than a European date, I just used short hand.

Coda, when will you fix this as it’s really, really annoying. I just imported a spreadsheet and it doesn’t understand the dates so ‘translated’ them into US format. Likewise I’ve had to go through and change all the currency columns.

Other posts tend to get a response from Coda, where’s the one here saying that at least it is on their roadmap?

2 Likes

It’s years that we requested better localization but they completely ignore us.
If you’re looking for a tool that does proper time and number format you can check Zenkit, albeit it is more limited in terms of features.

3 Likes

No apologies for raising this again but I’ve just found that copying a table to post in text or spreadsheet also defaults to US format and Excel doesn’t know how to handle this.

Even if I change a Coda column to ISO format, eg 2020-07-25, it will paste in Excel in US format as 07/25/2020. This is more than just a bug, it causing problems, especially as Excel can’t convert it.

I am very disappointed at the lack of response from Coda on this issue.

5 Likes

Hi @Jonathan_Richardson,

I understand your frustration (I really do).

In the meantime there are some workarounds (quite easy) that are useful especially in importing/exporting data with excel/Google sheet.

You can create an export view that - instead of the actual date column - it displays an explicitly text-converted column that contains what the destination would expect.

If for example the date format of the destination is European ("DD/MM/YYYY"), you can create a European Date column (with Text datatype) with the following formula:
Format("{2:00}/{1:00}/{3}", thisRow.[Your Date].Split("/")

Hopefully a more radical Date/Time handling will sort it once for all, but it’s a quick patch that does its job.

I hope it helps.
Cheers

5 Likes

Thanks Frederico, I’ve since found that the easiest way is to use text to columns in Excel using this advice when pasting into Excel. Still a faff but hoping that Coda will fix this.

1 Like

Another bug/frustration (and I won’t stop posting these till my preferred date format is allowed…) is that in chart view if the X-axis is a date you can only have US date format, which makes it very confusing to read.

This is true even if the original column is in my selected date format.

5 Likes

And another issue I just found. I’m not hunting these I swear.

If you Summarize a group of dates (in my case I used Min and Max to get start and end dates) it too goes to US format.

PS - I found this chart and I’m not surprised they used red to highlight the one exception :slight_smile: As others pointed out, this is not just a European date convention
image

6 Likes

Hi @Jonathan_Richardson,
I know.
I worked so hard in date-time conversions in the financial area in my life that I guess I used all the possible workarounds.

I’m also pursuing my personal challenge to let the world adopting the International Fixed Calendar (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Fixed_Calendar): do you want to support me? :upside_down_face:

One thing easier - and likely more sure - is that Coda will extend the date-time implementation: let’s be patient and we will celebrate! :calendar: :wink:

5 Likes

I can get behind this but I’ve formed a splinter group to have the month start on Monday.

Ah I see what I’ve done there… oops

1 Like

Ahahahah :grin::grin::grin:
Good point!

1 Like

Don’t get me started, that’s next on my wishlist of calendar changes.

Who on earth starts the week on a Sunday other than vicars? Yet the Coda calendar starts on a Sunday.

1 Like

The same people who put the month first

1 Like

+1 for me too.

I diligently changed the format of EACH AND EVERY “Date” column, to ISO (yyyy-mm-dd), only to be thwarted by a bar chart, which displayed mm/dd/yyyy on the x-axis, and couldn’t be changed. Doh.

ps. While we’re here, talking default doc or profile date format, a default currency symbol would be very useful too.

2 Likes