>>>>>The problem here that this format is set('date') dependent. What if I'm using 01-01-2004 format? Also AA allows to enter any letter, and I need to allow only AM or PM. Moreover, it depends, am I using military time format or not.
>>>>
>>>>You're probably using the 24-hour format hh:mm; the military time is hhmm (without the colon).
>>>>
>>>>I sometimes wish AM/PM was never invented... it's so ridiculously illogical.
>>>
>>>Thanks for clarifying. We are using full notation here with AM/PM. And it looks like this little big or feature of VFP would not allow me to build this custom class I promised my colleagues. It works for date fields, but doesn't work for datetime. What a pity! :(
>>
>>I've seen such a custom class on one of my previous jobs - and it had the time part chopped into three fields - hours, minutes, am/pm, which were handled separately and the datetime value was composed from them programmatically. The hour and minute part were spinners, and for AM/PM I don't remember what was there, but I think there was a "@M AM/PM" inputmask and a fake spinner to switch by mouse. Whoever did it probably took all day, but it was then heavily used in reporting, to enter time intervals. People just wanted to know the sales per shift, and in restaurants, shifts sometimes ended at 02:00.
>
>
>Do you know, why this code doesn't work, e.g. InputMask is still empty?
>

>*---------------------- Location Section ------------------------
>*   Library: 	Acustomcontrols.vcx
>*   Class: 		Txtdate
>*   Method: 	Init()
>*----------------------- Usage Section --------------------------
>*)  Description:
>*)
>
>*   Scope:      Public
>*   Parameters:
>*$  Usage:
>*$
>*   Returns:
>*--------------------- Maintenance Section ----------------------
>*   Change Log:
>*       CREATED 	01/31/2005 - NN
>*		MODIFIED
>*----------------------------------------------------------------
>IF NOT DODEFAULT()
>	RETURN .f.
>ENDIF
>IF TYPE('this.ControlSource') = "C" AND TYPE(this.ControlSource) = "T"
>   this.Format = "" && we can not use D format, because it doesn't allow to edit time portion
>   LOCAL lcInputMask
>   lcInputMask = CHRTRAN(TRANSFORM(DATETIME()),"1234567890","9999999999")
>   this.InputMask = STRTRAN(STRTRAN(m.lcInputMask,"M","A"),"P","A")
>   =MESSAGEBOX(this.InputMask)
>ENDIF

hi Nadya,

I did not follow the whole thread.
What's wrong with

this.InputMask = ''
this.Format = 'D'

and if its in a grid >> the column.Format and Column.InputMask