I need help with putting in a date in a cell. Iformat the cell and type in
03/17/07, when I click enter 10/22/86 is entered. I have tried all options in
the format, also when I click format cell and then date there is a * in
front. Can anyone help?
I am using Excel 2003 this problem just started.

I believe that the * prefix is something to do with the operating system
short and long dates. Do you know how the dates are set in your windows
operating system. Do you have the correct region, date format etc. Check in
control panel regional and language options.

Also, try custom format and set the format to mm/dd/yy and let me know what
happens.

Note: If you have the region dates set to say dd/mm/yy in the operating
system, when you enter dates into a cell that has been formatted as mm/dd/yy,
you have to enter them in the operating system format and they are then
displayed in the cell as per the way you formatted the cell. You can see this
by observing the formula bar and the cell and they can look different.

Regards,

OssieMac

"Darlene" wrote:

I need help with putting in a date in a cell. Iformat the cell and type in
03/17/07, when I click enter 10/22/86 is entered. I have tried all options in
the format, also when I click format cell and then date there is a * in
front. Can anyone help?
I am using Excel 2003 this problem just started.

On Tue, 20 Mar 2007 22:37:00 -0700, Darlene
wrote:

I need help with putting in a date in a cell. Iformat the cell and type in
03/17/07, when I click enter 10/22/86 is entered. I have tried all options in
the format, also when I click format cell and then date there is a * in
front. Can anyone help?
I am using Excel 2003 this problem just started.

Most likely, you are NOT typing in 03/17/07 but rather you are typing in
031707.

--ron

On Tue, 20 Mar 2007 22:37:00 -0700, Darlene
wrote:

I need help with putting in a date in a cell. Iformat the cell and type in
03/17/07, when I click enter 10/22/86 is entered. I have tried all options in
the format, also when I click format cell and then date there is a * in
front. Can anyone help?
I am using Excel 2003 this problem just started.

Hit return too soon.

Most likely you are NOT typing in 03/17/07 but you are really typing in 031707.
The latter would give you 10/22/86 if your cell were formatted mm/dd/yy

If you want to be able to type in numbers without the date separators, you will
have to either use a formula to convert the value you type in to the true date,
using a separate column; or you will need a VBA routine to perform the
conversion "in place".


--ron