Forum Discussion
MicrosoftPermanently changing the default excel date format from dd-mmm to mm/dd/yy for all future files.
For as long as I can remember, I have had to manually reformat dates in excel from the default 20-Jun (dd-mmm) format to something that people actually use (never seen dd-mmm anywhere but as default in excel).
Is there a way to never have to do this again by changing the default in all new .xls files I create? Not sure how the current default was chosen, but not something any person/company/business unit I have ever worked with/in has used.
I would be forever thankful if I didn't have to manually reformat again :). Thank you!
4 Replies
zookjones Check the regional (date) settings on your computer. Excel follows whatever you have specified there.
No, this does not do it. Excel is hardwired to convert anything that resembles a date with day and month to dd-mmm. The regional / date settings have nothing to do with it.
You can force it to a halfway sensible date format like dd/mm/yyyy (mm/dd/yyyy is not anything like sensible) by entering dates that way e.g. 12/09/2022. But that forces you to type in all the redundant info that you could avoid if you could just type in the date in the simplest format (12/9).
This has been a huge annoyance for me for the entire 25+ years I have been using Excel.
WTF can't they just give users a choice?
I agree that is frustrating and stupid. I can imagine the entire microsoft community having to reformat every cell, every day, forever, and nobody cares. Why doesn't at least one MS developer stand up and fix this?
