Hi Paul > And if it's already a Date, there's no need to use strptime! If I write this require 'date' start_date = Date.strptime(start_date, '%d/%m/%y') end_day = (start_date + 1) p end_day.to_s #putting to string to see format I recieve this => "2006-06-15" How then do I format it into a two-digit year European date? e.g. "15/06/06" (I can't see anything in the date class.) This is what I am doing at the moment require 'date' start_date = Date.strptime(start_date, '%d/%m/%y') end_day = (start_date + 1) p end_day.to_s end_day = end_day.to_s a = end_day.split('-') end_day = "#{a[2]}/#{a[1]}/#{a[0]}" p end_day => "15/06/2006" thanks aidy