Date Format

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jackie
  • Start date Start date
J

Jackie

When I format a cell for a date, to show as 03/22/04, and
then enter the actual date in the cell it comes up with a
totally different date. When I am entering, I enter the
date as 032204. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
 
Hi jackie

AFAIK you need to enter days using either / or - as a separator
e.g. 03/22/04 or 03-22-04
the reason is that excel stores dates as a serial number (where 1 =
1/1/1900) and what it is doing when you enter 032204 is assuming this is a
serial number and "converting" it to the date that it relates to - which is
3/2/88.

Hope this helps
Cheers
JulieD
 
032204 is a number not a date. As dates are held as serial numbers since
01/01/1900, you are effectively entering that number of days, which is 2nd
March 1988?

If you could enter dates in that way, how would you enter numbers?

--

HTH

Bob Phillips
... looking out across Poole Harbour to the Purbecks
(remove nothere from the email address if mailing direct)
 
You have to enter the date in a format that lets Excel
know that you've entered a date. Entering "032204" is
actually just entering the number 32204, or if viewed as a
date, 3/2/1988. You've got 3 options.

1. Enter the dates in a format understood by Excel (for
example 3/22/04 or 3-22-04).

2. Use code to tell Excel to recognize the format that you
are using. MVP Chip Pearson has a section on this on his
website: http://www.cpearson.com/excel/DateTimeEntry.htm

3. Pre-format the cells as text, enter them as you are
now, and use a formula in another cell to convert them to
dates:

=TEXT(A1,"00\-00\-00")*1

and format the cell as mm/dd/yy.

HTH
Jason
Atlanta, GA
 
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