How do individual users set their preferred date format?

[Rob Bl]

How do individual users set their preferred date format?

Surely this can't be something that administrators get to decide for everyone in their organization, since date format is (obviously) a personal preference. But I can't find any solutions that don't require an admin access, and don't force a single date format on every user.

So what am I missing?

[Lucas Modzelewski _Lumo_ · Accepted solution]

Hi @Rob Bl ,

Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

Unfortunately, date & time settings are configurable at global level for all users.

Individuals can only set their time zone, in their Atlassian account settings: https://support.atlassian.com/jira-software-cloud/docs/manage-your-jira-personal-settings/ 

[Rob Bl]

Thanks for the info. That's really disappointing. You'd think Atlassian would have the common sense to realize date format is a personal preference. (Of course, over on the Confluence boards people have been begging for several common-sense changes for literally years, and Atlassian doesn't seem to care, so maybe this is par for the course.)

[Lucas Modzelewski _Lumo_]

It's even a bit more twisted, as displayed date can be assumed based on user language preferences ;) 

Check this: https://support.atlassian.com/jira-software-cloud/docs/how-do-date-and-time-formats-work-in-the-issue-view/ 

[Rob Bl]

Yeah, Microsoft's SharePoint and (most of the) Office webapps are the same way — and that's even more frustrating since other Microsoft products not only let users choose from several date/time formats, but actually lets users create their own. The only one that let's you set your own format is Microsoft Lists, and only if you create an alternative, custom version of the date field — then enter the date the default way in the default field.

To be fair, I suppose this is legitimately a low priority (how many people care that much, as long as the format is something they're familiar with?). But I'm just so hard-coded into YYYY-MM-DD HH:mm, that it makes me crazy because if they can do it by region, and admins can do it, they can surely do it by date/time style (in fact that would be a lot easier than by region), and by individual users. They just choose not to.