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I’ve been trying to format DateTime and currency in asp.net 2.0 databound controls (DetailsView and GridView). After some googling I was able to get it figured out.

To format DateTime values, you might expect to use a tag like this:

<asp:BoundField 
     DataField="BeginDate" 
     DataFormatString="{0:d}" 
     HeaderText="Begin Date" />

and have a result like this:
10/10/2004

but instead you get a result like this:
10/10/2004 12:00:00 AM

Here’s the fix – add HtmlEncode=”false” to your BoundField tag:

<asp:BoundField 
     DataField="BeginDate" 
     HtmlEncode="false" 
     DataFormatString="{0:d}" 
     HeaderText="Begin Date" />

The same idea applies to formatting currency, I’m assuming other types of data formatting as well. Here’s Microsoft’s explanation.

Technorati Tags: asp.net, formatting datetime, formatting currency, DetailsView, GridView