When I enter a date in Excel it converts to a 5-digit number. WHY?
 

I have formatted the column etc and done all that Excel help explains. but
the date keeps converting to a year number, not mm/dd/yyyy which is what I
want. This happens only in column A.

When I enter a date in Excel it converts to a 5-digit number. WHY?
 

Format column A to Date.

If you are getting a 5 digit number you have A formatted as General.

For more on how Excel stores dates and times see Chip Pearson's site.

http://www.cpearson.com/excel/datetime.htm#SerialDates


Gord Dibben MS Excel MVP

On Mon, 8 Jan 2007 12:45:00 -0800, Wendy@EIS
wrote:

I have formatted the column etc and done all that Excel help explains. but
the date keeps converting to a year number, not mm/dd/yyyy which is what I
want. This happens only in column A.