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Invalid date format - Categorized in: 
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2 posts.
Started 10 Mar 2012 by brett. Latest reply 10 Mar 2012 by lkessler.
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Invalid date format - Categorized in:
2 posts. Started 10 Mar 2012 by brett. Latest reply 10 Mar 2012 by lkessler. RSS
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Joined: Mon, 12 Jan 2009
36 blog comments, 59 forum posts
Posted: Sat, 10 Mar 2012
Format members
Occasionally you do not know a complete date, such as:
13 (Date only known)
13 APR (Date and month only known)
APR (Month only known).
What/how do people code this in their software?
Do they:
Key it in the date field?
Include it as a note?
Some other option.
Thanks
Brett
Joined: Sun, 9 Mar 2003
287 blog comments, 245 forum posts
Posted: Sat, 10 Mar 2012
Brett:
It depends on the program and what it lets you do. If programs allow date phrases, which are dates in any format whatsoever, then that would be fine. A date phrase in GEDCOM is any expression enclosed in parenthesis, e.g.:
2 DATE (April 13)
If that is not allowed in your program, I'd just add it as a note, e.g. NOTE Aunt Helen's birthday was on April 13, but we never knew how old she was.
GEDCOM requires a year, or a year an a month, or a year and a month and a day for the date to be expressed in the valid date format of: dd MMM yyyy - which prevents ambiguity and allows sorting of dates for programs that want to do that.
Louis