note mreaves Thanks very much ramlight... I'm on a Win8 machine... even with the quotes, I'm getting.... <code> the date_raw is: 4/5/13 the m_raw is: 04 the d_raw is: 05 the y_raw is: 2013 the time_raw is: 16:09 the hh_raw is: 16 the mm_raw is: 09 the loaded datetime variable is: 1365192540 the formatted date time is: %b %d, %y %T </code> is there a switch I missed or something else ??? 1045652 1045654