On that day some computer programs and even some computer chips may either fail or become inaccurate. This is because some programmers used to (and indeed may still) use the date 9/9/99 as a marker in their programming code which meant end of code or end of a particular instruction or series of instructions. Some programs also use 9/9/99 as an error code.

CHCs need not worry about what actually causes this problem but they should be aware of the potential threat to important data.

Avoid setting dates in spreadsheets or databases to this date - perhaps setting the date to a couple of days hence or after.

It is not expected that CHC computers will fail as a result of this problem and Office 97 shouldn’t have any problems. CHCs should perhaps be careful when sending e-mails on that day, it being more prudent to send them the next day.

Further information is available upon request from your IT Support Officer.