Configure Database Date Format

[Grant]

The database date format is determined by the Remote Prefs configuration in your database. This determines how Specify exports and handles dates nearly everywhere in both Specify 6 and 7.

Date pickers within the application will be based on your browser’s locale (unless you disable ‘User accessible full date picker’ in the Specify 7 preferences.

WorkBench and Batch Edit data sets must conform to the date format specified in the Remote Preferences file below. Before changing the date format, please make sure all pending changes and data sets have been uploaded or committed.

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1. Go to the User Tools menu and navigate to App Resources

   
   

2. To change the database date format, access the app resources function as an admin user by clicking on the user name at the top of the page. Then under the Global Resources there should be a Remote Preferences resource.

   From here, find the ui.formatting.scrdateformat property.

   

   Find the ui.formatting.scrdateformat property. In many examples, it defaults to:

   ui.formatting.scrdateformat=dd/MM/yyyy
   

   We strongly recommend switching to the ISO format:

   ui.formatting.scrdateformat=yyyy-MM-dd
   

   This format (yyyy-MM-dd) is the internationally recognized ISO 8601 standard and avoids ambiguity across locales.

   It can be set to one of the following values (note that yyyy-MM-dd is the ISO 8601 standard and is highly recommended):

   Format pattern	Example	ISO?
   MM dd yy	06 05 25
   MM dd yyyy	06 05 2025
   MM-dd-yy	06-05-25
   MM-dd-yyyy	06-05-2025
   MM.dd.yy	06.05.25
   MM.dd.yyyy	06.05.2025
   MM/dd/yy	06/05/25
   MM/dd/yyyy	06/05/2025
   dd MM yy	05 06 25
   dd MM yyyy	05 06 2025
   dd MMM yyyy	05 Jun 2025
   dd-MM-yy	05-06-25
   dd-MM-yyyy	05-06-2025
   dd-MMM-yyyy	05-Jun-2025
   dd.MM.yy	05.06.25
   dd.MM.yyyy	05.06.2025
   dd.MMM.yyyy	05.Jun.2025
   dd/MM/yy	05/06/25
   dd/MM/yyyy	05/06/2025
   yyyy MM dd	2025 06 05
   yyyy-MM-dd	2025-06-05	ISO-8601
   yyyy.MM.dd	2025.06.05
   yyyy/MM/dd	2025/06/05

   Tip: Switching to yyyy-MM-dd ensures unambiguous, internationally recognized dates.

[fedoras]

Is there a way for the fancy date picker to be disabled on user preference level, as to avoid being overridden by the browser settings?

[Grant]

Hi @fedoras,

You can establish a default user preferences file in the App Resources.

We have instructions available on how to do this on GitHub:

Setting Default User Preferences

[User Preferences] In Specify 7.7.0, the User Preferences menu was introduced! This menu enables users to customize various preferences such as appearance, behavior, home page, navigation menu, interactions, forms, collection chooser, attachments, tree editor, query builder, record merging, reports and labels, WorkBench, app resources, and GeoMap. Setting custom default preferences for both new and existing users can be a great idea! Defaults can be set for each collection, discipline, or in…

You can disable these two options:

• Use accessible full date picker
• Use accessible month picker

This will make it use the Specify default date picker which will be based on the format established in the guide above!