Thanks for your reply Mangesh, you are correct it does work that way, however
I think in previous versions of excel I have been able to enter it the other
way (ie. the Australian way).

Natman

"Mangesh Yadav" wrote:

It is probably because you are entering a date like 31/12/2005 and excel is
trying to read it as mm/dd/yyyy and since there is no month = 31 it converts
the whole thing into text string.

Always enter as say 31 dec 2004, and whatever format you have used, it will
get converted automatically

Mangesh



"Natman" wrote in message
...
I would like to enter dates in a field using dd/mm/yy, however I want it
to
display the DAY also ie: ddd dd/mm/yy. I have tried to format the cell in
custom formatting however it displays exactly what I have typed, even
though
the formatting indicates it should read the way I want it to.
I have just purchased this copy of Office 2003. Any ideas would be
appreciated.