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Microsoft Year 2000 Readiness Disclosure & Resource Center |
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Preparing Office Solutions for the Year 2000 |
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Examining Report Presentation
Most custom solutions have some type of output that goes to format that people can read. This output can be in the form of HTML pages, Microsoft Word documents, Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, Microsoft Access reports, and many others.
Every piece of information generated by your application for external consumption should show year information correctly. Each output you generate must be tested to ensure that, where necessary, all four digits of the year are included. The reason for this is two-fold. First, it allows the developer to spot-check the output of the application to ensure that the correct century is being used. Second, it ensures that whatever application or process uses the data doesn't have to assume the century—it’s indelibly implanted in the data itself by the serving application.
Examine each output format to see where dates are being used. In most cases, you should ensure that the full four digits of the year are being displayed.
Remember that changing one or more date fields in an output format to support four digit years may result in expansion of the space used on the page. This can cause the output to wrap differently—especially when the date is used in the header of a report. Be sure to preview each output format you modify to ensure it still fits within the defined margins.
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Features
