In my case, I needed to display timestamps based on locale. Adding onto qianyd's answer above, I selected the element that needed formatting, went to properties, searched for the "net.sf.jasperreports.export.xls.pattern" property and used a Pattern Expression for that property with this value $P{REPORT_LOCALE}.equals(Locale.forLanguageTag("en-gb")) ? "dd/MM/yyyy HH:mm" : $P{REPORT_LOCALE}.equals(Locale.forLanguageTag("fr-ca")) ? "yy-MM-dd HH:mm" : "M/d/yy h:mm AM/PM"[/code]