This is a 2 part story. First, I'm trying to format a date field in the report. Used the TextField properties to set the pattern to dd-MMM-yy. The field would not use the pattern, so I figured, to change the class of the TextField to Date. Running the report complained that it could not convert from String to Date, so I change the class of the field from String to Date. Ok, now the report format the column using the pattern provided. Q1: Was that the right trail to get iReport to use my pattern for formatting the Date? Second, now that the report is working with the pattern provided, I receiving an error when the date column is null. I have selected to option to print a blank when null in the TextField, but it still issues an exception when running the report. Error filling print... Unable to get value for field 'DATDate' of class 'java.util.Date' net.sf.jasperreports.engine.JRException: Unable to get value for field 'DATDate' of class 'java.util.Date' I noticed that if I change the field class back to a String, it will handle the null value properly and print the blank. But then, I'm back to square one, the pattern is not used for formating the Date. Q2: How to handle null values in a Date class column of a ResultSet? I'm using iReport 2.0, JDK 1.6, MS-SQL JDBC driver 1.1.