Part III: Creating Charts and Other Visualizations
The code used for date and time formatting is fairly intuitive. For example, ddd is the syn-
tax for the three-letter day, mmm is the syntax for the three-letter month, and yyyy is the
syntax for the four-digit year.
There are several variations on the format for days, months, years, hours, and minutes. It’s
worthwhile to take some time and experiment with different combinations of syntax strings.
Table 23.3 lists some common date and time format codes that you can use as starter syntax
for your reports and dashboards.
TABLE 23.3 Common Date and Time Format Codes
Format Code 1/31/2019 7:42:53 PM Displays As
M 1
Mm 01
mmm Jan
mmmm January
mmmmm J
dd 31
ddd Thu
dddd Thursday
Yy 19
yyyy 2019
mmm-yy Jan -19
dd/mm/yyyy 31/01/2019
dddd mmm yyyy Thursday Jan 2019
mm-dd-yyyy h:mm AM/PM 01-31-2019 7:42 PM
h AM/PM 7 PM
h:mm AM/PM 7:42 PM
h:mm:ss AM/PM 7:42:53 PM
Using symbols to enhance reporting
Symbols are essentially tiny graphics, not unlike those you see when you use the
Wingdings, Webdings, or other fancy fonts. However, symbols are not really fonts. They’re
Unicode characters. Unicode characters are a set of industry-standard text elements
designed to provide a reliable character set that remains viable on any platform regardless
of international font differences.
One example of a commonly used symbol is the copyright symbol (©). This symbol is a
Unicode character. You can use this symbol on a Chinese, Turkish, French, or American PC,
and it will reliably be available with no international differences.
