Change the time format in Windows Vista

Can you believe it? I'm writing about simply switching between 12-hour and 24-hour time formats for the clock in the Taskbar. But, astonishingly, changing this setting... actually even finding it is very hard. You are probably here because you searched for how to do that. You have probably searched your head off for the setting in the date and time settings shown to the right, (probably lost some hair in the process) and you can swear that there is no such setting in there. Let me clear all doubts: there really isn't!

Well, then, you ask How in the world do I change the format!? Simply put, from the Control Panel. Yes. I'm not sure about Windows 7, but this is really bad design from Microsoft's side.

So, to change the format,

• You go to Control Panel.
• Click 'Clock, Language and Region'. 
• Here, click 'Regional and Language Options'. 
• In the dialog, click 'Customize this format...'

•  In this new dialog box, switch to the 'Time' tab. 

•  Everything is explained in detail here. The photo above shows the settings for a 12-hour format.

So, that does it. Also, this is a limitation. You can't get the AM/PM to get to the right of the numbers, as far as I know.

Check out my other posts in ths archive. You might learn how to remotely sign out of Facebook, use the site-pinning feature of Internet Explorer 9 in Windows Vista, or find out the difference between Chromium and Google Chromium.

Change the time format in Windows Vista