Date Formats for Cells Do not match System Date Formats

[Hoges]

Version: 2008 Operating System: Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) Processor: Intel I have just loaded Office 2008 and then update to the latest update 12.2.4
I have my system preferences set to Australia for date and time using the date format dd/mm/yyyy. But in Excel when I open the format cell dialogue and select date the only formats available for selection are in the mm/dd/yyyy formats. When I checked in "Numbers" the dd/mm/yyyy format is used so "Numbers" is picking up the system preference why not the excel.

 

[CyberTaz]

Did you by any chance have Excel running the last time you modified the
System Prefs? Excel reads the International settings on launch, so try
Quitting Excel & launching again. If that doesn't correct it, see if
repairing disk permissions & restarting the Mac will put things right.

HTH |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[Hoges]

Yes tried restarting etc. I have two MacBook Pros and both are showing the same behaviour in regards this date format issue. Also if I insert a date in Word the date formats offered are in the dd/mm/yyyy format etc. So Word is picking up the System Preference Date Format but not excel.

 

[Hoges]

Further I just completed a full reset of Office 2008 with no change to the problem

 

[pjonesCET]

In format menu try Cells:

choose date from this window:

http://screencast.com/t/YjQzYTRjN2Et

or go to custom and you can add as I have in the box show in this picture:

http://screencast.com/t/OGU4YTNl

I typed in dd-mmm-yyyy

Which would Day Fully spelled Month, and year. as

31-August-2007

if you want 10-Aug-10
would be : dd-mm-yy

 

[CyberTaz]

What do you mean by a "a full reset of Office"? If you mean reinstalling the
software, that will rarely change anything for the better & often makes
things worse. It reverts to the version level on the DVD which must then
have the updates reapplied & can cause various bits to get out of synch -
especially if a proper removal isn't done first. The program files are the
only thing that get replaced & they aren't what cause the problems... It's
the user files & settings that need be dealt with.

In your System Prefs, do you have the appropriate 'Region' specified in
addition to the Formats? What happens if you hold Shift while launching
Excel? Also, try logging in using a different User Account. Reply with the
results of each test.

Regards |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac