While importing pictures I cannot change the import settings on the right hand side of the panel. I would like to change the date format.

Question

Apparently I am missing something (stupid). Suggestions are welcome. I'm a novice with Lightroom. Just migrated from Aperture.

Answer 1

I am going to assume that what you meant about changing the date format is that you want to change the way the date is formatted in the renamed file. Is that correct? To do that, you need to tell Lightroom you want to rename your photos during import. On the right hand side panel of the Import dialog is a section on File Renaming. Open that up and you will find a Template drop down box. This is where you can build a file renaming template to fit your needs or you can create a custom one. If you do create your own, make sure to save it as a preset if you want to reuse later. There are all sorts of ways to rename your files with several different date formats to choose from.
Another possibility is the subfolder option for where you are going to store your imported folders. If you chose to Organize By Date, you can also use the Date Format drop down box to choose a date format. This will cause Lightroom to build a folder for each date found in photos you are importing a create a separate folder for each day found. So, if you had three batches of photos from three separate days, three new folders would be built by Lightroom and the photos created on day one would be stored in the day one folder. Same for day two and day three.
Finally, if you don't like the format of the capture date or one of the other dates fields stored in the metadata, you are out of luck. You can change the date but not the format.