Excel 2000+XP copy/paste in new sheet drops 4 years from date

[George Wilson]

I have a customer who is using Excel XP. He is copy and
pasting a date with format 10/20/2003 from one sheet to
another. When he pastes onto the second sheet it drops 4
years off the date. I tried this on my system also, I am
running Excel 2000 and I get the same behavior. Is there
some kind of date setup that I need to look at. I am
thinking this may be somehow related to the 1900/1904 date
issue, am I correct?

 

[Dave Peterson]

One way to add those four years back is to find an empty cell, put 1462 into
that cell.

Copy that cell.

Select your range that contains the dates. Edit|PasteSpecial|click Add (in the
operation box).

You may have to reformat the cell as a date (mine turned to a 5 digit number).
But it should work.

You may want to do it against a copy...just in case.

(I'm not sure which one you'll fix. You may want to edit|pastespecial|click
subtract.)

Most windows users use 1900 as the base date. Mac users (mostly??) use 1904 as
the base date.

 

[Guest]

This may "fix" the problem but does not help to explain
what has happened here. Anyone have any ideas?

-----Original Message-----
One way to add those four years back is to find an empty cell, put 1462 into
that cell.

Copy that cell.

Select your range that contains the dates.

Edit|PasteSpecial|click Add (in the

 

[Dave Peterson]

One workbook had the base date set for 1900 and one workbook had a base date for
1904.

tools|options|calculation Tab|Near the bottom

(I thought that the original poster nailed it with his 1900/1904 date issue
remark.)

 

[Guest]

Thank you. I knew it had something to do with that but did
not know how to correct it.
Thanks again....

 

[Dave Peterson]

in this case anonymous = George?

(I wasn't sure you were the same person (huh?))