Question

How do I amend a date? I need 1/12/1973 but it’s come out the other way around. I cannot find a way to edit this

Answer 1

Hi Yvonne,

There are several ways you can input a date. Try one of those listed here:

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Date_Fields

Come back here to the forum if you need any further assistance.

Comments

Thanks Peggy, I knew there must be other allowable input formats but since I've always entered in just one way, I've never used them.

Answer 2

The standard date format in the date fields is: dd mmm yyyy

where: dd=2-digit day of the month, mmm=month abbreviated to first 3 letters, yyyy=4-digit year.

This is also the general standard in genealogy, except that in narrative biographies we spell out the month name. I hope this helps!

Comments

I used to work for a multi-national company, and we always had to write months out either in full or with three-letter abbreviations to avoid confusion with different date-writing systems.

For example, I (British) would interpret the date you wrote (1/12/1973) as 1st December 1973, but my son-in-law (American) would interpret it as almost a year earlier on 12th January 1973.

Answer 3

Cheers for answering my query so promptly. A big help!

Answer 4

I don't know if this helps, but the WT database stores dates in the ISO standard way, which is YYYY-MM-DD.

Comments

If you enter the date in the ISO format, WT will convert it to the dd mmm yyyy format when displayed.

If your intention is just enter the month and year, yyyy-mm-00 works too.  

I like this format because it is fast to enter on the keypad on my full QWERTY keyboard.