date formatting
 

I selected a cell to be formatted as a date (MS example 03/14/01)

When I key 120199 in that cell it displays in as 02/02/29......Why?
I even went into the Control Panel then Regional Settings for Date.

date formatting
 

Gracie

You need to put in the slashes when you input a date:

12/01/99

If you input something that Excel recognises as a date, it will format the
cell automatically, although it might not be exactly what you want.

Regards

Trevor


"Gracie" wrote in message
...
I selected a cell to be formatted as a date (MS example 03/14/01)

When I key 120199 in that cell it displays in as 02/02/29......Why?
I even went into the Control Panel then Regional Settings for Date.

date formatting
 

Dates are numbers
120199 = 02/02/29

If you enter 1 in a cell and format it like a date you get this
1/1/1900

Enter the / between the YMD or if you want to enter only numbers see
http://www.rondebruin.nl/qde.htm


--
Regards Ron de Bruin
http://www.rondebruin.nl


"Gracie" wrote in message ...
I selected a cell to be formatted as a date (MS example 03/14/01)

When I key 120199 in that cell it displays in as 02/02/29......Why?
I even went into the Control Panel then Regional Settings for Date.

date formatting
 

Hello Gracie,

Even though you have formatted the cell to be a date you will still have to
type the slashes, ie. 12/01/99.

When you type in a number Excel calculates what the date would be that
number of days since 01/01/1900. So 02/02/29 is really 02/02/2229 which is
120199 days since 01/01/1900.

Judith

--
Hope this helps


"Gracie" wrote:

I selected a cell to be formatted as a date (MS example 03/14/01)

When I key 120199 in that cell it displays in as 02/02/29......Why?
I even went into the Control Panel then Regional Settings for Date.

date formatting
 

Dates are stored as serial numbers. The serial number for February 2nd, 2229
is the number 120199. 120199 represents the number of days from 1/0/1900
(1/1/1900 equals 1). Enter your dates with hyphens "-" or slashes "/". For
more information look in the help under "enter a date", and "How Microsoft
Excel stores dates and times".

"Gracie" wrote:

I selected a cell to be formatted as a date (MS example 03/14/01)

When I key 120199 in that cell it displays in as 02/02/29......Why?
I even went into the Control Panel then Regional Settings for Date.