Forum Discussion
Solved
Entering dates
I have my cell format set to Date 14/03/12. However, when I enter a date, Excel entirely changes it. For example, if I enter 010121 (for 1 January 2021) it comes up as 16/09/27. Do I have to enter / between the day, month and year for every entry? That's very tedious ... What am I doing wrong??
- short answer is yes. you could use 1-1-21 if you prefer but otherwise excel just thinks you entered a number 010121. if you want you can convert all your dates to days so entering 44197 would give you 1/1/21 and 44198 will give you 1/2/21, etc...
7 Replies
LIz_CC Excel sees your entry as number 10121. Formatted as a date it will become the 10121th day counted from January 1, 1900. Hence, 16 September 2027. If, for example, your Excel recognises English dates you can just enter 10jan in a cell that is formatted as dd/mm/yyyy and it will show as 10/01/2021.
Edit: The system seems to be slow today. Didn't see any of the above until after I posted my response.
- OK. Thank you.
- short answer is yes. you could use 1-1-21 if you prefer but otherwise excel just thinks you entered a number 010121. if you want you can convert all your dates to days so entering 44197 would give you 1/1/21 and 44198 will give you 1/2/21, etc...
- While I understand the desire to have completely unique identifiers for dates, there is no way I'm memorizing the number of days since January 1900. How can I get Excel to show the dates in the format I chose? I'm getting very frustrated!
- OK! Thank you.
