Configuring Regional Settings (Windows SharePoint Services 2.0)

  • Article

Every Web site (both top-level Web sites and subsites) based on Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services can be customized to use specific regional settings that apply to the users of your site. You can specify the following regional settings:

  • Locale

    Controls how numbers and dates are displayed in the site.

  • Sort order

    Controls the sort orders used for lists and libraries.

  • Time zone

    Controls the time zone for the Web site.

    Note

    You cannot configure a client's view to see document information in their time zone if it is different than the site's time zone. For example, if you have a site set to Eastern Time (US and Canada), and a user in Amsterdam adds a document at 1:00 PM (or 13:00) local time, the document properties show that it was added at 7:00 AM Eastern Time. If this is a problem for your site, you may want to consider creating a personalizable Web Part to show all documents and list items in a specific time zone. For example, the Web Part could list all document libraries and lists in the site, and then the user could select which document library or list to display and the time zone to display it in, and then they would see the data from that document library or list converted to their time zone. For more information about creating custom Web Parts, see the Windows SharePoint Services Software Development Kit.

  • Time format

    Specifies whether to display times in 12-hour or 24-hour format.

To specify the locale ID for a site, you can use either HTML Administration pages or the command line. To change the sort order, time zone, or time format for a site, you must use HTML Administration pages. For more information about language settings in Windows SharePoint Services, see Language Considerations (Windows SharePoint Services 2.0).

Changing Regional Settings in HTML Administration Pages

You can change the locale ID, sort order, time zone, and time format for an individual site by using the Regional Settings page in the Site Administration pages.

Server administrators and members of the SharePoint administrators group can also specify a default time zone to use for all sites on a virtual server. For more information, see Configuring Virtual Servers (Windows SharePoint Services 2.0).

Change the regional settings for a site

  1. On the site, click Site Settings.

  2. On the Site Settings page, under Administration, click Go to Site Administration.

  3. On the Site Administration page, under Management and Statistics, click Change regional settings.

  4. On the Regional Settings page, select the settings to use, and then click OK.

Specifying Locale IDs on the Command Line

When you extend a virtual server, create a new top-level Web site, or create a new subsite from the command line, you can specify the locale ID to use. The extendvs, createsite, createsiteinnewdb, and createweb operations all accept the lcid parameter. To enter a locale ID in any of these operations, you type the numerical value for the locale (such as 1033 for U.S. English or 1036 for French/France). For example, to create a new subsite and use the French locale ID for France, you would use the following syntax:

stsadm.exe -o createweb -url https://server_name/site1/subsite1 -lcid 1036

All of these operations take several other parameters. For more information about these operations, see Command-Line Operations (Windows SharePoint Services 2.0).