access query

Hi I am new to this site and this is my first database, I am making a database with an expiry date which is working fine with 6 months taken off, so I know what is going to be out of date, the problem I'm having is bringing up just the before and today's date, the field is set for mm/yyyy, some of the fields don't have any information in as I have to go through the items 1 at a time inputting this info, when I use <date() the info I want I there but then this message comes up, data type mismatch in criteria expression, any help would be much appreciated, this is the last thing I need to do to start using this

Many thanks

access query