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Regional Settings in SharePoint 2007

By: Will Robinson Posted: February 18, 2007 at 10:33 AM

Global companies use different date formats depending on the employee's home office location. SharePoint 2007 provides two methods of setting regional settings: Global and Local. Contrary to popular belief, SharePoint does not use the server regional settings. In fact, SharePoint 2007 provides fewer options than Windows 2003 and Windows XP. For example, the format DD-MMM-YYYY is not supported. A good example of this format would be 5-Feb-2007. Leaving this out does not seem to be a big deal. However, to Americans, 9-11-2001 is a major date in our history. To Europeans and most of the world, that date is interpreted as November 9, 2001. The formats DD-MM-YYYY and MM-DD-YYYY are confusing. Back to SharePoint configuration.

When a site collection is created, the default regional setting is English (U.S). Configuring regional settings can be found in the site settings of each site. This includes the top level website. By default, regional settings on newly created child sites inherit from the parent site; but only on creation. If you do not change the regional setting in the top level site before creating child sites, you will have more than one site using the incorrect date format. Regional Settings contain more than date formatting, but that is my focus for this posting.

Site Level Settings

Fortunately, there is an action that allows you to reapply regional settings to child sites. Open Site Settings for the top level web site. The easiest way to confirm you are in the top level web site is to use the Manage Site Content and Structure page. This is found under Site Actions.

At the top node, select Settings | Site Settings.

This is the page to configure the available regional settings for this site. To apply the settings to all child sites as well, enable the checkbox - All sub-sites inherit these Regional Settings.

When you select OK, SharePoint will apply the settings.

Personal Regional Settings

For global companies, it is rare that a team site will be used by employees from a single country. You can override the site's regional settings with your own regional settings. When you login to SharePoint, there is a Welcome control at the top of the page containing your name. Select the drop down, and choose My Settings.

Select My Regional Settings.

Configure your personal regional settings. It is important to uncheck the box – Always follow web settings. Disabling will allow your settings to override the site settings.

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Help...

By: madhu.g | Posted: March 31, 2009 at 7:58 PM

I am not able to view my settings under a site but im able to browse the site. how to do change the regional settings.

Only if Publishing feature is enabled

By: Daryll Holland | Posted: March 22, 2009 at 11:31 PM

It should be noted for Site Collection regional settings that you must have the 'Office SharePoint Server Publishing' feature enabled, otherwise the 'All sub-sites inherit these Regional Settings' tick box won't be there. I've just spent 30 minutes figuring out why I couldn't see it...

How to localize shareopoint site ?

By: Nimi | Posted: December 23, 2008 at 4:15 AM

How to localize sharepoint site based on the users culture without using resource files. is ther any method to override the existing regianl settings ??

How to modify user's rgional settings programmatically

By: Sharad Jain | Posted: June 25, 2008 at 2:58 PM

SPWeb web = ContextUtility.GetCurrentWeb(); web.AllowUnsafeUpdates = true; SPUser currentUser = web.CurrentUser; SPRegionalSettings regSett = new SPRegionalSettings(web, true); regSett.TimeZone.ID = regSett.TimeZones[55].ID; currentUser.RegionalSettings = regSett; web.AllowUnsafeUpdates = false;

Required Permission

By: Todd Walker | Posted: January 22, 2008 at 5:31 PM

Under the settings for the permission level that a user is assigned, the following permisson must be enabled in order for My Regional Settings to show: Site Permissions -> Edit Personal User Information - Allows a user to change his or her own user information, such as adding a picture.

Change the Date Format to dd/MMM/yyyy

Posted: December 13, 2007 at 8:35 AM

How should i change the date format to dd/MMM/yyyy, as this is our client requirement. date format should be configurable, as this is the most basic feature for a site.

Programatically setting Personal Regional Settings

Posted: July 17, 2007 at 1:06 PM

This is all good info. But what if you wanted to set regional settings (time zone specifically) based on an external data source, such as Active Directory, or even some Javascript that captures a user's time zone settings? The object model doesn't seem to support this, because you cannot programatically 'uncheck' the "Always follow web settings" setting. I'd love to have a way to save the user from having to adjust this setting manually.

Changing date format

Posted: July 9, 2007 at 2:27 PM

Why would Sharepoint not support an unambiguous format like dd-MMM-YY which is ideally suited for global collaboration? I really need a fix for this.

What rights are needed to get My Regional Settings link?

Posted: June 3, 2007 at 8:51 PM

Hi, thanks for this article! We have MOSS 2007 installed locked down with no MySites deployed...so end users cannot see the My Regional Settings link. What are the minimum permissions they need to get this link please? We have tried many settings - they have Use Personal Features rights but still do not see this link. Thank you! Adam

Changing Personal Regional Settings Programmatically

Posted: March 31, 2007 at 2:18 PM

Do you know if these personal regional settings can be manipulated programmatically? Thanks!

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About Will Robinson

Engagement ManagerWill Robinson is an engagement manager for PointBridge. He has over 10 years of experience in the IT industry delivering and managing large scale projects in the insurance, banking and publishing indu... [more]