Enter Times

The order of time components is significant. Enter the hours first; then minutes; then seconds; then milliseconds; then AM (or am) or PM (pm).

12AM is midnight; 12PM is noon. To be recognized as time, a value must contain either a colon or an AM or PM signifier. smalldatetime is accurate only to the minute. time is accurate to the millisecond.

Milliseconds can be preceded by either a colon or a period. If preceded by a colon, the number means thousandths of a second. If preceded by a period, a single digit means tenths of a second, two digits mean hundredths of a second, and three digits mean thousandths of a second.

For example, “12:30:20:1” means 20 and one-thousandth of a second past 12:30; “12:30:20.1” means 20 and one-tenth of a second past 12:30.

Among the acceptable formats for time data are:

14:30 
14:30[:20:999] 
14:30[:20.9] 
4am 
4 PM 
[0]4[:30:20:500]AM

Display and entry formats for bigdatetime and bigtime include microseconds. The time for these datatypes must be specified as:

hours[:minutes[:seconds[.microseconds]] [AM | PM]

hours[:minutes[:seconds[number of milliseconds]] [AM | PM]

Use 12 AM for midnight and 12 PM for noon. A bigtime value must contain either a colon or an AM or PM signifier. AM or PM can be entered in uppercase, lowercase, or mixed case.

The seconds specification can include either a decimal portion preceded by a point, or a number of milliseconds preceded by a colon. For example, “12:30:20:1” means twenty seconds and one millisecond past 12:30; “12:30:20.1” means twenty and one-tenth of a second past.

To store a bigdatetime or bigtime time value that includes microseconds, specify a string literal using a point. “00:00:00.1” means one tenth of a second past midnight and “00:00:00.000001” means one millionth of a second past midnight. Any value after the colon specifying fractional seconds will continue to refer to a number of milliseconds. Such as “00:00:00:5” means 5 milliseconds.