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Posted to microsoft.public.excel.worksheet.functions
Del Cotter Del Cotter is offline
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Default Custom date formatting

On Mon, 11 Jun 2007, in microsoft.public.excel.worksheet.functions,
I said:

"Rick Rothstein (MVP - VB)" said:
Is there a way to format an Excel date such that
the month appears as a single letter? JFMAMJJASOND


Wouldn't doing that make it harder to decipher which month or day is
represented by your date and, for some months in some years, impossible?


For the purpose I have in mind, it's not a problem, because the dates
will never occur at random, but always in context. So Tuesday is
always distinguishable by being a T flanked by an M and a W, while
Thursday is always a T flanked by a W and an F.


Updating long after my original query to say that sometimes the Excel
experts get it wrong: there is indeed a date option that displays the
month as a single letter, even though that risks ambiguity. It's right
there in the "Date" number formats, at least in Excel 97. The format
"mmmmm" will display January (or June, or July) as "J", and so on.

Sadly, there isn't an equivalent for days of the week. "ddddd" just
defaults to "dddd" and spells out the whole day.

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Del Cotter
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