If you want to use system date settings, you must limit your dates to year > 1600. If you want to use dates older than 1601, you must use SET DATE to something other than SHORT or LONG. This is documented in the SET DATE help topic. The API used to format the date according to the Windows date settings has this date range limitation, and you will see it in any development language that uses this API. This goes back to when we introduced SET DATE SHORT/LONG in VFP5.

I'm sorry if this is a big problem in your application. There's not many other options here, this is just how it works...

>My application must use windows date settings, I cannot hard code them.
>So I have lines
>
>SET SYSFORMAT ON
>SET CENTURY ON
>
>in my init code.
>
>How to use your suggestion so that this is works with any windows date formats ?