US vs UK date and time formats
 

Being in the UK, I obviously want to use the English(UK) date format, so
Christmas Day is 25/12/05 rather than 12/25/05. However, this defaults
the time format to hh/mm/ss (why, I do not know, since I can assure
American readers we're not normally that precise), so I have to reset it
English(US) to get hh/mm, which resets the default date format to
mm/dd/yy, so I have to change it back the next time I want to format a
cell as a date.

Any way round this? It's only a minor problem but it's irritating me.

Steve

You can change the default date/time format (at least in
XP) under Start Control Panel Date, Time, Language,
and Regional Options.

HTH
Jason
Atlanta, GA

-----Original Message-----
Being in the UK, I obviously want to use the English(UK)
date format, so
Christmas Day is 25/12/05 rather than 12/25/05.
However, this defaults
the time format to hh/mm/ss (why, I do not know, since I
can assure
American readers we're not normally that precise), so I
have to reset it
English(US) to get hh/mm, which resets the default date
format to
mm/dd/yy, so I have to change it back the next time I
want to format a
cell as a date.

Any way round this? It's only a minor problem but it's
irritating me.

Steve
.

Jason Morin wrote:
You can change the default date/time format (at least in
XP) under Start Control Panel Date, Time, Language,
and Regional Options.

HTH
Jason
Atlanta, GA


Thanks, but that's not really the problem. Excel 2003 is taking its
default date/time option from the settings on the PC. However, because
someone at Microsoft seems to think that we in the UK express times as
hh/mm/ss rather than just hh/mm, if I need to format a cell as a time I
have to set FormatCellsTimeLocale to 'English US'. This, however,
sets the Locale for my dates to 'English US', too, so when I want to
format a Date, I have to change my Locale back to 'English UK', thus
resetting my time format ....

What I really want to do is tell Excel 2003 that by default I want to
use a dd/mm/yy format for my dates and a hh/mm format for my times, just
as I could do in Excel 2000. Is it possible?

Steve