On Wed, 19 Oct 2005 12:28:09 -0700, A strange species called Gary''s
Student wrote:

First setup the formatting of three cells:
1. select A1 and pull-down: Format Cells.. Number Date
and then select a universal format like "14-mar-2001"

2. repeat above for cell A2

3. select A3 and format as General

Put =TODAY() in A1
Put your next birthday in A2
Put =A2-A1 in A3

Gary.

I tried this formula of =A2-A1, and I got a strange date value. It
gave me 20-Mar-00. I think maybe it is trying to give the value in
date format even though I selected it to be general as you said.

Do you know if there is a way to custom the formatting so it returns
the value in days?

I'd also love to know how I can select to have the date in the
following format for the first two cells dd/mm/yyyy. This is what I
always use here in the UK, but when I go into FormatCells and Number,
and select date this way of doing the date is not one of the options
available for selection, and a lot of them have the month first.

Thanks

John