Indeed it does include a day element; it also includes hour, minute
and second elements.

A DATETIME value in Access/Jet is an instant in time; the equivalent
data type in the SQL standard is (more appropriately) named
TIMESTAMP.

Is March 2007 an instant in time? No, it's a period. In SQL products
such as Access/Jet that have only one temporal data type, a period
(single atomic fact) is modelled using a start date and end date pair
(same row, two columns). Therefore, the period March 2007 is the
period

[#2007-03-01 00:00:00#, #2007-03-31 23:59:59#]

The square brackets indicates I'm using the closed-closed
representation, where both delimiting DATETIME values are in the
period being modelled. The end date is the last time granule within
the period using the SQL product's smallest supported time granule,
which for Access/Jet is one second. Primarily, I choose closed-closed
because it suits intuitive (human readable) constructs such as

test_date BETWEEN start_date AND end_date

However, it also satisfying 'unequivocal' e.g. if I tell you the
period for submission of entries to a competition is

[#2007-03-22 09:00:00#, #2007-03-22 15:00:00#)

the bracketing this time indicating the representation is closed-open
(note the curved closing bracket), is it clear that an entry submitted
with a timestamp of #2007-03-22 15:00:00# would not be valid? For me
it is not as clear as the equivalent closed-closed representation
i.e.

#2007-03-22 15:00:00# BETWEEN #2007-03-22 09:00:00# AND #2007-03-22
14:59:59#

is obviously false.

Jamie.

--

You seem to be confusing  how a date is entered with how it is stored
and how it is displayed.
An entered date must have a valid month, day, and year component, as
well as a Time component. The time part may be omitted, in which case
Access assumes midnight. If you enter 03/08, Access will assume you
mean 03/08/Current Year.  If you enter 03/07 Access will assume the 07
is the current year and assume the 1st day of the month, i.e.
03/01/07. To further confuse the situation, if you enter 03/08/98,
Access will assume you mean 03/08/1998.
Of course if you enter a month, day and 4 digit year Access doesn't
need to make any assumptions at all, which is always best.

In any event, the value will be stored as a double number, counting
the number of days from a beginning date of 12/30/1899. So 03/08/07
will be stored as  39149.0, the .0 part being midnight.

The display is a different matter. You can display a valid date in
many different fashions, some being Month/day; Month/Year; Year;
Month; Day; Quarter, etc.

The best way to solve your entry dilemma is to enter a complete date
value, month/day/year.
Then display just the month and day.