My question relates to data entry into a column type of DATE. I am in the UK and my preference, when entering dates using the keyboard, is to type in dd/mm/yy. I have set a custom date format for the column of DD/MM/YYYY and the locale for the document is set to United Kingdom (English). Nevertheless, when typing 4/8/26, for example, the result is a US-centric 8 April 2026 and not 4 August 2026 as I would expect in the UK.
Does anybody know where and how to change this so I get the correct behaviour for my locale?
I was trying to test this but wasn’t successful in recreating the issue. I am located in the US but set my date column to the custom format dd/mm/yyyy. When entering dates using the keyboard, typing 4/8/26 resulted in 4 August 2026, as expected.
Now, if I typed this into a new column where the formatting was not yet set, it would default to the US-centric 8 April 2026 (even if my locale is set to United Kingdom).
Are you entering the date into an already existing date column where the format is already set to DD/MM/YYYY? Or into a new field where no column type or formatting has been set?
The only thing I could think of that would affect this would be some browser setting? In Chrome, this would be controlled by Languages. You can modify this by going to Settings > Languages (chrome://settings/languages) > Ensure English (UK) is set as the top preferred language.
Hopefully someone else can jump in who might have experienced this before!
Thanks Natalie, I’ve been messing around with this. I’ve created a new, duplicate column, set the formatting to DD/MM/YYYY and moved all the data from the old column to the new. The new column behaves as I’d expect and I can no longer recreate the old behaviour. In my playing, I have discovered, though, that it is very easy to make data entry in a date column default to US-centric behaviour. If I use “DD/MM/YYYY dddd” as the format, basically just adding the day of the week onto a UK-formatted date, the data entry reverts to US format. Similarly, if I use “MMM YYYY”, again data entry is US-centric.
Is it possible to have data entry into date fields to respect the locale that is set for the document? Do you think this is a bug or an enhancement request?