Smart Dates

Panorama is very flexible about how you type dates. We call this feature “smart dates.” You can enter dates numerically (for instance 04/09/02 or 4/9/2) or you can spell out the date (for instance April 9th, 2017 or Apr 9 17). You can use any character as a separator between numeric dates, for example 4–9–21 or even 4.9.21.

To enter today’s date, simply type today. You can also enter yesterday or tomorrow. Panorama will automatically convert these entries to the correct month, day and year. If the date is in the current week, you can simply type in the name of the day, for example saturday or tue. To specify a day in the previous or upcoming weeks add the words last or next, for example next tuesday or last saturday.

When a date is edited, Panorama normally displays the date in the format mm/dd/yy. However, if you have set up an output pattern that Panorama understands for data entry, it will use that pattern instead. Patterns that can be used for data entry include Month dd, yyyy, Mon dd yy, and mm/dd/yyyy.

If you are using an international system and you enter the date as numbers you must use the format dd/mm/yy. Panorama does not understand the format 7-Aug-2028. (However you may use any delimiter character you want, for example 7/8/28 or 7–8–28 or even 7.8.28.)

#### Default Year and Century

When you enter a date, you can leave the year off and let Panorama figure it out for you. Panorama will automatically round the date to the nearest year. For instance, if today’s date is 1/11/17 and you enter the date 4/1 then Panorama will assume you mean 4/1/17. But if you enter 12/12 (or December 12) Panorama will assume you mean 12/12/16, not 12/12/17, because 12/12/16 is closer to 1/11/17 than 12/12/17 is.

Panorama also rounds dates to the current century. If the current year is 2002 (or even 1992) and you enter the date 7/2/23 Panorama will assume you mean 7/2/2023. If you want to enter a date more than 50 years from the current date you must enter the full date, for example 7/2/1923.

See Also

- age( -- calculates a person's current age (in years) from their birthdate.
- completedatestr( -- converts a date to text, spelling out the month and including the day of the week.
- Date Arithmetic Formulas -- performing calculations on dates, and converting between dates and text.
- Dates -- working with dates.
- datestr( -- converts a date to text using format *mm/dd/yy*.
- daystr( -- converts a date to the day of the week (for example *Sunday*).
- eurodatestr( -- converts a date to text in European format.
- longdatestr( -- converts a date to text by spelling out the month.
- years( -- converts a number of days into a number of years.
- yearsbetween( -- calculates the number of years between two dates.

History

Version | Status | Notes
10.0 | No Change | Carried over from Panorama 6.0