OK, but what is the relationship between the date Mar 31 1993 and the number
34,059?

"Mike H" wrote:

Select the cell that has the date in and change the format to number and all
will be revealed.

Dates in Excel are stored as numbers and formatted to appear as dates to you
and I.

Mike

"zxcv" wrote:

Hi,
I'm getting a calculation result I didn't expect and don't know where it's
coming from. I pasted a formula into a new cell and accidentally didn't
include the dollar sign to make it an absolute reference. Still, it did a
calculation on a dollar amount of $600, and a date of Mar 31 1993, and came
out with the result $20,435,400! I can't figure out how Excel is getting
this! I did 20,453,400/600, which gave me 34,059. But how does Excel get
that number from Mar 31 1993?