Date Format dd-mm-yy is wrong for Canada, should be yyyy-mm-dd

Question

Date Format dd-mm-yy is wrong for Canada, should be yyyy-mm-dd

The official standard in Canada for dates is yyyy-mm-dd as in ISO 8601 and CSA Z234.5:1989, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO8601usage, other wise we get confusion between the US mm-dd and UK dd-mm formats both often seen in Canada. The Federal Government and Province of Ontario both use ISO 8601, just look at your Drivers License.

Unfortunately there seems to be no means of correcting this in System Preferences/International/Format when you select Canada and programs such as Firefox then pick up the incorrect mm-dd-yy format and use and print it in the footer.

Could Apple either change the default Canadian Format to the correct YYYY-MM-DD or at least allow users to make this correction themselves?

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.5.6), Canada

Posted on Mar 8, 2009 8:40 AM

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Answer 1

V.K.

Level 9

56,192 points

Mar 8, 2009 8:51 AM in response to McCarthy Forester

there is a customize button in system preferences->international->format and you can rearrange the order of month-day-year as you want.

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Answer 2

nerowolfe

Level 6

13,090 points

Mar 8, 2009 12:44 PM in response to McCarthy Forester

I use Y/M/D all the time. It's not a Canadian format, it's an international format. The US military has always used it, and many people here have used it for years and prefer it. I believe most of Europe also uses it.
I find no problem setting it up that way, using the international preferences. There is nothing for Apple to change or fix.
If FireFox does something else, then your issue is with FireFox, not Apple.

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Answer 3

Mar 12, 2009 5:52 PM in response to nerowolfe

Thanks to both of you. I was able to set the date format correctly to ymd and even replace the / with the more correct - . Apple Mail now shows the longer yy-Mon-dd format and that is fine.

However Firefox and Thunderbird still do not pick up the correct format and as you say, that is their, not Apple's issue

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