Date formatting

[Katie]

I have never had this problem before, and now, all of a sudden ..!! I'm
frustrated! Ok..here's what's going on:
What I'm trying to do, is format a column of cells, or even just an
individual cell, to display a date as mm/dd/yy. I remember doing this
before, and only having to type in, for example, 010106 if I want the cell to
display 01/01/06 (which obviously woudl be for January 1, 2006). What's
happening is, after i type in my numbers, and hit enter to move on to the
next cell- it changes it for some reason. If i type in 010106 into a date
formatted cell, it displays "09/01/27". What's going on, and how can I fix
it?

 

[Biff]

Hi!

010106 is being evaluated as 10106 which is serial date 09/01/27 (Sept 1
1927).

See this:

http://cpearson.com/excel/DateTimeEntry.htm

Biff

 

[Gord Dibben]

Katie

Don't know how you did it before, but Excel by default will not accept dates
typed this way.

See Chip Pearson's site for method of entering dates and times.

http://www.cpearson.com/excel/DateTimeEntry.htm

Or Bob Phillips' site for the QDE add-in.

http://www.xldynamic.com/source/xld.QDEDownload.html


Gord Dibben MS Excel MVP

 

[Katie]

But how do i FIX it? How SHOULD I type it? How do i get it to stop evaluating
it as a serial date?

 

[David Biddulph]

Type it as 01/01/06 (or you can probably get away with 1/1/06).

 

[Biff]

If you want to enter the date as a sting like 010106 and have it
automatically change to a date like 01/01/06 requires an event change macro.
See the instructions provided in the link.

http://cpearson.com/excel/DateTimeEntry.htm

Biff