So I’m maintaining an Access database, with lots of VBA code, which serves as an internal management tool.

Changing a report should be, and usually is, pretty straight forward. But there I am today, after all changes are done, stuck trying to understand WHY THE FREAKING F*** a format string doesn’t work.

The offender is a text box with a date, and I’m trying to get it to be displayed like Nov-2015. So, according to Microsoft’s documentation, the format string is mmm-yyyy. Needless to say, didn’t work.

After an hour or so of banging my head on the wall, enlightenment comes: Year in German is Jahr !!! So mmm-jjjj, and, pronto, it worked like a charm.

By the way, Microsoft’s german doc is wrong (seems like a copy-paste error): it mentions jj and yyyy, instead of jj and jjjj which work (giving 15 and 2015 respectively).

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR *#@$%