ive been at this all morning and my brain's fried from starin at numbers--im
sure its simple and im just being dumb but i could really use the help

You don't.


Gord Dibben MS Excel MVP

On Sat, 17 Oct 2009 09:21:01 -0700, LCpl Bissler, Mark J USMC <LCpl Bissler,
Mark J wrote:

ive been at this all morning and my brain's fried from starin at numbers--im
sure its simple and im just being dumb but i could really use the help

16/11/09 in one column, 22/11/09 in the next

--
HTH

Kassie

Replace xxx with hotmail


"LCpl Bissler, Mark J USMC" wrote:

ive been at this all morning and my brain's fried from starin at numbers--im
sure its simple and im just being dumb but i could really use the help

Joel,

You have done something strange with your message, in that you've included
your new material as if it were part of what you've quoted from Kassie.

The thing which determines how Excel interprets dates is not "different
versions for different countries". It's determined by the Windows Regional
Options, set through Control Panel.
--
David Biddulph

joel wrote:
Kassie;528816 Wrote:
16/11/09 in one column, 22/11/09 in the next

Now finally a good question. A US member of the USMC trying to
enter a date in International standard (Day/Month/Year). Now that
is a problem. Excel has different versions for different countries.
The US version won't recognize the International dates, and the
Internation version of Excel won't recogmize the US dates.

the US version will only recognize an input in US format of
month/day/year, but will automaticaly convert to International
standard is you change the format of the cell(s).


Use the worksheet menu to format the cell as follows


Format - cells - Number - Custom

Then in the box type either d/m/yy, dd/mm/yy

Excel will automaticall reverse the month and date after you enter
the date.

Joel,

You didn't quote the relevant parts of the message to which you replied, but
in reply to your:

" Now finally a good question. A US member of the USMC trying to
enter a date in International standard (Day/Month/Year). Now that
is a problem. Excel has different versions for different countries.
The US version won't recognize the International dates, and the
Internation version of Excel won't recogmize the US dates.

the US version will only recognize an input in US format of
month/day/year, but will automaticaly convert to International
standard is you change the format of the cell(s)."

.... , I said:
"The thing which determines how Excel interprets dates is not "different
versions for different countries". It's determined by the Windows Regional
Options, set through Control Panel."

You were talking not about how the number is *displayed*, but how it is
*entered*.

The cell formatting governs the *display*, and changing the format will not
change the underlying number if a date has been wrongly interpreted at the
time of entry.
The Windows Regional Settings governs the interpretation of numbers that are
*entered".

You are quite corrrect that it is safer to use an unambiguous format.
The ISO 8601 standard format is 2009-10-18
--
David Biddulph

joel wrote:
I don't think yhou want to have somebody from the US change there
regional setting just to send a report to somebody who is using
international standards. The person from the US should just reformat
the date cells in a custom format. the other sloution is just use the
international date system spelling out the month so nobody gets
confused.

The International standard date format is

11 November 2009