From your description it sounds like you have text in one cell and dates in
the other. You can not really compare the two. When you double click the cell
you enter then exit edit mode. This causes Excel to do an implicit conversion
of the text to a date and now you are comparing dates with dates and all is
well. Now assuming your text dates look something like 1/1/2007 you can force
an implicit conversion of the cells by highlighting all of the text dates and
doing a find and replace on either the zero or the /. When the replace is
done Excel will convert the text to dates. Just make sure that the cells are
formatted as date before you start.
--
HTH...

Jim Thomlinson


"fee" wrote:

I have a spreadsheet which is created from a access 97 dump, it puts a
contract date and a promise date in, this is sent to the vendor who
puts in a forecast date. I have done an IF statement that says
=IF(c1=d1,"ok","why"). The problem is that when you type in the
forecast date even though it matches it does not work. Tried to format
the cells to date, cut the cells changed the format then pasted them
back in.
The only way it works is if you change the format and then double click
on the cell, then enter the forecast date this then works.

Why does this happen and also what is the way round it.