Select date/time format
Select a display format for your text clock. You can pick 'TIME', 'DATE', etc from the list and see how the current date/time previews. This puts a code such as 'dd MMMM yyyy' in the 'Date/time format box'. This then formats the date or time based on this code. These are programming codes which determine how the current date or time is displayed. These codes are complex but we have left this open to allow maximum flexibility. To format a code other than one of the standard ones, it is easiest to click on each of the types in turn, such as 'TIME', 'DATE', 'DATE IN WORDS', etc and look at the codes needed to display in a format you need common codes that you may need are:
| Code | Description |
| HH | Hour number such as 08 |
| mm | Minutes number such as 45 |
| ss | Seconds number such as 23 |
| dd | Day number such as 30 |
| dddd | Day name such as Tuesday |
| MM | Month number such as 01 |
| MMMM | Month name such as January |
| yyyy | Year number such as 2010 |
You can also use separates such as '/' or ':' characters, commas (,) and spaces to display a date or time in the format required.
A programmers reference for these codes is available at (but this isn't for the faint hearted):
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/8kb3ddd4.aspx
TimeZone
If this is left on 'DEFAULT SYSTEM TIME' then it will use your computer's current date and time. You can change the time zone to another location. This is used to display the time at other locations in the world. For example, you may have 3 clocks in your presentation. One for London, one for Paris and one for New York.
Optional culture code
If this is left blank then it uses the computers default culture which depends on control panel settings, which is most likely to be UK or US English. This is only useful when displaying the names of days or months in non-English languages such as French, Spanish, etc.
For example, the format code (see above) for displaying the name of the month is:
MMMM
If the culture code is set to en-UK or en-US and the month is 'June' then we get:
June
If we used the Italian culture code of it-IT then we would get:
guiugno
| Code | Description |
| en-UK | English (British) |
| en-US | English (US) |
| fr-FR | French (France) |
| es-ES | Spanish (Spain) |
| es-MX | Spanish (Mexico) |
For other countries, a list of these codes is available at:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee797784(CS.20).aspx