Forum Discussion
Anlu42
Nov 14, 2025Occasional Reader
Excel interprets dates 12 and lowers as months
Hi If I in any cell, without any adjustment of cell formatting, excel will interpret 15/8 as 15-aug, as it should but 4/8 is interpreted as 8-apr... Is there any way to get excel to interpret this ...
Kidd_Ip
Nov 15, 2025MVP
You aware Excel does not actually “know” whether you mean dd/mm or mm/dd when you type something like 4/8. By default, Excel interprets ambiguous dates based on your system’s regional settings (Windows short date format). That’s why 15/8 works (since 15 can’t be a month, Excel has no choice but to treat it as a day), but 4/8 flips to April 8 because both 4 and 8 could be valid months.