A real date is one which Excel rcognizes as a date depending upon your Windows
Regional Settings

An entry could look like a date but be text which Excel does not know where to
sort.

i.e. with Windows regional options set to short date of mm/dd/yyy.

An unambiguous date would be entered as 6/1/2008 and return June 1, 2008

1/6/2008 would return January 6, 2008

When you get to entries like 13/1/2008 or 21/5/2008 Excel will treat that as
text because there is no month 13 or 21

A real Excel date will have a serial number.

You can check by changing the column format to General.

Real dates will produce a serial number, text dates will not change.

January 6, 2008 will have serial number of 39453
June 1, 2008 will have serial number of 39600


Gord

On Sat, 22 Mar 2008 17:30:01 -0700, lindalou
wrote:

What is the difference between a "real" date and some other kind of date? I
have both 2000 and 2007, and in neither will dates sort properly. I have used
the dropdown box that lets you select the date format. I type in, for
example, "6/1" and it converts it to "1-Jun". When I sort, I will get some
dates correctly sorted; other dates will be out of sequence. This can include
things like some of the June dates where they should be and others mixed in
with October and December. I have tried using "Custom" rather than date, but
that doesn't help.

"Gord Dibben" wrote:

If real dates, DataSortDescending


Gord Dibben MS Excel MVP

On Tue, 19 Feb 2008 08:21:01 -0800, Todd wrote:

I have a "date" column in my spreadsheet. Is there a way to sort this column
so that the dates are ordered (from earliest to present)? Thanks!! Todd