thanks, this helped alot with our dates formatted like 20070703 for 7/1/2007
with a little editing to
=DATE(LEFT(A9,4),MID(A9,5,2),RIGHT(A9,2)). Now I can use DAYS360 to compare
with dates in the MM/DD/YYYY format

"T. Valko" wrote:

You can convert the numeric string to a date like this.

the year is one digit in the source data
Assuming the year is *always* in the 2000 decade

A1 = 10501
B1 = 5/1/2001

=DATE(2000+LEFT(A1),MID(A1,2,2),RIGHT(A1,2))

Returns 5/1/2001

So, to comapre the 2 dates:

=DATE(2000+LEFT(A1),MID(A1,2,2),RIGHT(A1,2))=B1

--
Biff
Microsoft Excel MVP


"botany_girl" wrote in message
...
Hello!

I have a worksheet containing two datasets. Each set of data has
associated
dates--but they are entered as different numbers. One set has the date in
format ymmdd as a number, i.e. 10501 represents May 1, 2001 (the year is
one
digit in the source data). The other set has the date entered as a date,
i.e. 5/1/2001. I have the columns set up so that they display the same
numbers, but the original data within the columns is formatted
differently.

I have to look at the data to make sure that the values in the two columns
match. However, it's a huge dataset, so doing this manually is going to
take
a long time. I wanted to insert a logical argument
[=IF(value1=value2,true,false] in a separate column to save time, but
since
the source data are in different formats, I get a FALSE every time.

Any ideas on how I convert these beasts into identical formats so that I
can
use the logical argument strategy? The displayed numbers must not be
changed
to the odd Excel date-counting format, unfortunately--if that were the
case
it wouldn't be so difficult.

Thanks for any suggestions,

lisa