Have you ever wished that Windows displayed the full date instead of the short date format in the Windows 7 Taskbar? With this easy tutorial, you will have Windows displaying the date exactly how you want it to.

To get started click the bottom right corner of the screen where the time and date are displayed in the system tray.

When the pop-up dialog opens, click on the "Change date and time settings..." link.

The Date and Time box displays. Click the "Change date and time..." button.

On the Date and Time Settings dialog box, click on the "Change calendar settings"  link.

At last, after all that clicking, you will arrive at the "Customize Format" dialog box. Here is where we will customize the way Windows displays the date.  The field you want to customize is called "Short date:". You can make it display in any format that you would like. See the legend below the screenshot for some examples.

You can configure your options using a combination of any of the letters below.

Legend:

d = Day

M = Month

y = Year

d = Displays the day as a number. Example: 2

dd = Displays the day as a number with a leading zero for single digit days. Example: 02

ddd = Displays the day of the week as an abbreviated word. Example: Sat

dddd = Displays the day of the week as a full word. Example: Saturday

M = Displays the month as a number. Example: 8

MM = Displays the month as a number with a leading zero for single digit months. Example: 08

MMM = Displays the month as an abbreviated word. Example: Aug

MMMM = Displays the month as a full word. Example: August

yy = Displays the last two numbers in the year. Example: 11

yyyy = Displays the year in full. Example: 2011

Additionally, you can separate the parts of the date with spaces, dashes (-), commas (,), slashes (/), or periods (.).

Example:

If we wanted our date to display as Saturday, August 20, 2011, we would change the "Short Date:" field to:

dddd, MMMM dd, yyyy

Below, we have configured it to show the date in the format described in the legend.

Just what we were looking for.