Curious request !!
"the value of that cell be that date range?"
What do you expect the value to be?
One date multiplied by the other - one subtracted from the other or maybe
some other function ?
Why is using two columns an inelegant solution - it makes it so easy to
incorporate or change each date - you can get rid of the visual dividing grid
line by changing the fill colour to white!
After having said that; is incorporating something like
=DATEVALUE(LEFT(A1,8)) and/or =DATEVALUE(RIGHT(A1,8)) in your formulae such a
difficult option?
I'm still curious !!

"Glen" wrote:

Hello,

I do a lot of work with financial years that run from mid-year to mid-year
(eg 1 Jul '08 to 30 Jun '09). I think this is more a feature request but
feel free to read on...

Has anyone come up with an elegant way to represent a date range within a
single cell that can then be used in formula without having to deconstruct
the cell to extract the date range back out again?

Two inelegant options are using two columns to represent the start and end
of the date period, or using a single column but then having to calculate a
date offset in every formula that sums/counts/averages data back to the
period.

Wouldn't it be nice if you could just enter 1/7/08:30/06/09 into a cell and
have the value of that cell be that date range?

Looking forward to that elusive elegant solution (sigh)

Cheers,

Glen