"Date must be formatted in the system's short date/time format" during an import

When importing data, you may receive the an error containing the message "Date must be formatted in the system's short date/time format. Please adjust date format in template options." This is due to an incorrect date format.

When importing data into Acctivate, you may receive an error message similar to the one below if your import source has a value mapped to a date field and the value is incorrectly formatted:

Date must be formatted in the system's short date/time format. Please adjust date format in template options.

This is caused by the date in your source file (i.e., spreadsheet or text file)  using a date format that is different than the short date format defined in the Windows Region settings.

For example, if the Windows short date format is mm/dd/yyyy, then the data in your source file should also use the month, day, year sequence (note: it can also be formatted in other variations such as mm/dd/yy, mm-dd-yy, mm-dd-yyyy).

To resolve this error, simply change the value in the source file to match the Windows short date format.