Ctrl-; (semicolon) Keyboard Shortcut Does Not Work in Date Fields

Summary

The information in this article applies to LIMS 1.x and Access 2.0.

The Access keyboard shortcut Ctrl-; (semicolon) used to insert the current date does not work properly in some LIMS data entry fields.

More Information

Microsoft Access incorporates many keyboard shortcuts to speed navigating, editing, and data entry tasks. Among these shortcuts is the Ctrl-; (semicolon) combination to insert the current date.

Unfortunately, this shortcut does not work in data entry fields with specific input masks including most date fields in LIMS. The LIMS date fields use a “Short Date” input mask (“__/__/__”) to allow dates to be entered either with the separating slash (‘/’) in M/D/YY format or without the slash in 2-digit MMDDYY format.

To provide a workaround to this problem, LIMS includes the Ctrl-D macro to insert the current date into any text control that has a “Short Date” input mask. This macro is implemented using the Access AutoKeys macro.