Text Clip Date and Time Formatting

A few text clip objects display dates and/or times. Screen Monkey gives you complete control of how date and time is formatted and allows you to combine dates and times with static text. This flexibity requires a little bit of complexity.

The way Screen Monkey formats dates and times is based on a common set of letter abreviations which are listed below together with examples. Take care to understand how these work and when the special escape character is required.

Regular Date Time Formats

Code	Meaning	Example
h	Hours in 12-hour format	1 to 12
hh	Hours in 12-hour format with leading zero	01 to 12
H	Hours in 24-hour format	1 to 24
HH	Hours in 24-hour format with leading zero	01 to 24
m	Minutes	0 to 59
mm	Minutes with leading zero	00 to 59
s	Seconds	0 to 59
ss	Seconds with leading zero	00 to 59
f	Tenths of a second	0 to 9
ff	Hundredths of a second	00 to 99
fff	Milliseconds	000 to 999
t	A or P	A or P
tt	AM or PM	AM or PM
d	Day of the month	1 to 31
dd	Day of the month with leading zero	01 to 31
ddd	Day of the week, abreviated	Tue
dddd	Day of the week, full	Tuesday
M	Month of the year in decimal format	1 to 12
MM	Month of the year in decimal format with leading zero	01 to 12
MMM	Month in text, abreviated	Jun
MMMM	Month in text, full	June
yy	Year, last 2 digits	00 to 99
yyyy	Year, full 4 digits	0001-9999
\	The escape character	-

Additional uncommon codes (f, F, g, K, etc) are omitted from the table but maybe found online by searching for custom date and time format strings.

Countdown Date Time Formats

Code	Meaning	Example
!h	Total duration converted to hours	-
h	Hours in 12-hour format	1 to 12
hh	Hours in 12-hour format with leading zero	01 to 12
!m	Total duration converted to minutes	-
m	Minutes	0 to 59
mm	Minutes with leading zero	00 to 59
!s	Total duration converted to seconds	-
s	Seconds	0 to 59
ss	Seconds with leading zero	00 to 59
f	Tenths of a second	0 to 9
ff	Hundredths of a second	00 to 99
fff	Milliseconds	000 to 999
d	Days	0 to 999
\	The escape character	-

In countdown date format strings the codes have the same meaning when used in uppercase.

Escaping Special Characters

Sometimes the date and time string is contained within other text. For example you might want to write Here is the time: 12:45 or Next Meeting at 13:00. The problem with these examples is that Screen Monkey doesn't know which characters are regular letters and which are date time placeholders.

To identify a character as a regular letter instead of a placeholder you place a backslash \ before it. In the examples above these letters need to be escaped - H, t, s, h, m, M, g - because they have time or date meanings. The format strings must be re-written as \Here i\s \t\he \ti\me: HH:mm and Nex\t \Mee\tin\g a\t HH:mm

If you see strange results when displaying your clip then you are probably missing an escape character.

Examples

A few examples you may find helpful.

Example	String
24 hour clock with seconds	HH:mm:ss
24 hour clock	HH:mm
12 hour clock	h:mm tt
European date format	dd/MM/yyyy
North American date format	MM/dd/yyyy
Date and time together	dd/MM/yyyy h:mm
The time with static text	T\he \ti\m\e i\s h:mm
Total seconds remaining in countdown	!s