Access usually drops the parenthesis from the Date function. What is the rest of the line it's indicating?

Yeah, let's see it. Screen shots please. If you type in:

D = Date

That should be a valid command.

A Windows or Office Update shouldn't affect this.

Right now I am on my home computer and it is working ok. But when I went to my work computer, that is where I got the error. So, when I go to my work computer tomorrow i will take the code that works at home and replace the code on the work computer to see if that fixes it. BTW, all of my work in ACCESS is volunteer work at a food pantry (Daystar Hope Center) in Dade City. If it is not fixed at work, I will send the screen shots when I get home. Our ACCESS DB is on a LAN and we are not allowed to go on the internet.

You can always take pics of the screen with your phone... if that's allowed. I don't want to get you in trouble, but most problems are easier to troubleshoot if we can SEE what's going on.

I will find out if it's allowed.

I brought the database home and duplicated the error. The screen shot is above.

Okay, which line is actually throwing the error? The problem line should highlight in yellow when the error occurs. That red line is just showing me where you set the break point, which is meaningless here.

Double check that you don't have a field or control on the form named Date. That can cause this exact issue because Access will try to treat Date as a field instead of the built-in function.

Date() is the function
[Date] would be a form field

Ideally you'd want:

Dim D as Date
D = Date()
MsgBox D

I recreated your code exactly as posted and it runs fine here. Using a Variant works, although technically you'd want D declared as a Date. Either way, that assignment is valid. My guess is you've got something on the form named Date and it's creating a naming conflict.

When I keyed in the line that says D = Date() it dropped the parentheses and when I debugged the code that is where  that line gave me the error. I could not find any where I use "Date" in the code, so I decided to check the structure of the Client table and sure enough, the person who developed the database did not know that you cannot use reserved words as fields in a table, because there was a field named "Date" in the client table. I changed the name of the field, but that did not work either. I still got the same error. I used the function Date() in other code in the database and it did not drop the parentheses. When did ACCESS start dropping the parentheses?

Yeah, it's been doing that for a while now. Now, even though you change the name of the field at the table level, you might have a form control that still has the old name, because changing the name of the table doesn't change the name of the control on the form. Look for a text box on the form named "date".

No text box on the form named "date". I changed the code you suggested, but without the "D = Date" like this"

Private Sub Form_Load()

Dim D As Date
MsgBox D
........

End Sub

and the MsgBox displayed "= "12:00:00 AM"

Yeah, that's weird. It should be returning a date. Let me see screenshots of everything in design view:
- Your code
- Your form
- The control names
The more you can show me, the better chance I have of fixing it.

None of the form fields are the date function.

Alright, try doing the exact same thing in a brand-new blank database. Create a form, put a button on it, and stick just those two lines of code in there. That will tell us if it's a setting on your system or if it's that specific database.

Here is more stuff on the "Date Function not working" problem. If you go back to the original problem where I have to keyin the Startdate and Enddate twice maybe this will help. I think I read somewhere there is a way where you don't have to use parameters. Do you know anything about that? I think it involves creating another form that  uses unbound text boxes.

Is there some wa I can send you a Word doccument?

Stephen, you haven't assigned a value to D yet. You Dim'd it, but it has not value, that's is why it reads 12:00 am because it is equal to zero.

In order to put the current date, you'd need:

Private Sub Form_Load()

Dim D as Date
D = Date
MsgBox D

End Sub


When I do this, I get a message box that pops up with the current date, i.e. 2026-02-14

You can also use a form field to enter a date into either by typing or using the Date Picker

Donald excellent catch. How did I miss that? Sometimes I miss the simplest things. It's different when you're reading it on the screen versus when you're doing it and you're typing it in yourself.

Donald I think I just missed it also because in his earlier example way at the beginning of the thread, he did set D equal to date. He did declare it and then set the value, so it's just in that last example he didn't do that.

Yeah, I noticed that too Richard I've done that too, where I'm trying to correct one problem and introduce another that hides the first.

Stephen as a side note, in the design view of your "DayStar Client" form, I notice that there is a little "flag" on the "FirstVisit" control. You might want to check that out and see if it's the control name or the control source throwing the warning

Hello All

First of all the first image I noticed First visit has a problem, I don’t think that’s the issue but the error say Can't find the FIELD 'Date' referred to in your expression

This tells me that there is a field problem, I recreated the error by adding a Date field to the form
then I removed it from the form and change its name at the table level to MyDate, and got the same error message 2465?

The fix is to remove the table from the form, then save close open and add the table back.

This can be a problem, as there could be other things that may have to be done,  we really need to see table query and the form properties and field list to see what’s going on.

Hope this helps

Oh, the magic of ACCESS! I made a couple of changes to a couple of queries and VOILA!, everything is working right. No more keying in STARTDATE and ENDDATE twice, only once. Thanks to all those who helped. It cleared a few cobwebs in my 75 years old brain. I had another query that uses STARTDATE and ENDDATE that worked just fine. So I used it as a starting point.