Problem with date field when submitting to Access

[Mike]

My site has a form that contains two date fields.
The first date field is a required field and the
second is not.

I have this form post to an Access 2002 dbase.
The Field Types are set to Date/Time.
If the user puts a date in both fields, then there
is no problem when the form is submitted.
If the second date field is left blank then they
receive a 'Data Type Mismatch' error on
submission.

I suspect that they are getting this error because
a null value is not a date. This field is NOT
required and can be a zero length. (In Access
& on the form)

I import this information into Excel and I need
to maintain the Date formatting. If I have the
Field Type set to Text it works fine but Excel
does not see it as a Date and will not let me
change the formatting. I have learned that
Excel uses the Field Type as the format for
the data.

So my question is, how can I have a form
with date fields that can be left blank and be
submitted to an Access dbase?

Mikeal

 

[Tiffany K. Edmonds]

Here is some information on this issue:

Explaination to change date/time to text:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;246570
Work around for this known issue:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;296653

HTH