You can also wrap the cell references in the DATEVALUE function such as:

=DATEVALUE(B1)-DATEVALUE(A1)

where B1 is the end date as text and A1 is the beginning date as text.

Also if you have a whole column (say column A) of dates that you want to
convert you can enter =DATEVALUE(A1) and so forth in another column to get
dates (of course this column must be formatted as a date.

"Dave Peterson" wrote:

Changing the format the cell won't change the value of the cell.

After you reformat the cell, try reentering the data. Depending on what you
have in the cell, hitting F2, then enter may be enough.

Mifty wrote:

Hi there,

Is there a simple way to convert data in to recognisable date format? What I
want to do is calculate the difference between start and finish dates, but
the data has already been entered and excel is not recoginsing it as a date
even when it has been re-formatted as a date.

I would be so grateful for any help! :-)
--
Mifty

--

Dave Peterson