Hide Date Picker Calendar in Access Form

I’ve been working on a client’s database, in Microsoft Access, and one of the data entry forms has several fields for dates and times.

There’s a nice Date Picker feature that shows a calendar icon, if you click in a date field text box. Click that icon, and a popup calendar appears, so you can select a date, instead of typing it.

In the old days (Access 2003 and earlier), we had to program all of that, using a form and the calendar control, so this is much easier.

Hide Date Picker for Time Field

Unfortunately, Access can’t tell the difference between a time and a date, so that calendar icon appears for Time fields too. I just ignore it, but my client didn’t want to see that icon in the Time fields.

It seemed like a reasonable request, so I checked the properties, and there is a Date Picker setting that you can change.

Here’s how to turn off the Date Picker for a specific field

In Design View, select the field
Press F4, to show the Properties window (unless it’s already visible)
In the Properties window, click the Format tab
In the Show Date Picker property, click the drop down arrow
Select Never (the default setting is For Dates)
Save the Form, and return to Form View

Test the Change

After changing the Show Date Picker setting, go back to Form View. When you click in the Time field on the form, the calendar icon should not appear.

In the screen shot below, I’ve clicked in the Time In field, and there’s no icon at the right side, so the property change worked. I’ll check all the other time fields, to make sure that they have the same Show Date Picker setting.