Help - Need Different "Date" Format on Spreadsheet

Posted by Thomas Lotzer on February 14, 2002 5:31 AM

I appear locked in to any one of the sample date formats provided by Excel 97, and I don't like any of them.

I run five months of dates down column "A" on the spreadsheet and literally want the dates to appear as: Jan 25, Jan 26, Jan 27 ,etc, etc, and not come out as 1/25/02 or any other type format that Excel seems to want to "force" on me - can anyone help?

I use this same date grouping time after time throughout the year and have a "template" spreadsheet in place with the full year's calendar - so I do everything manually once a year and then just "copy" and "paste", but I can't get Excel to just print the dates as I type them onto that template spreadsheet.

Posted by Rick E. on February 14, 2002 5:42 AM

Go to Format/Cells/Custom and in the input line enter: mmm-dd

That should do it for you.

Good luck, Rick E.

Posted by George J on February 14, 2002 5:44 AM

Copying and pasting will give you the date format that was in the original cell eg mm/dd/yy.

If you want the dates to be all the same, ensure that on the template the date format is as you want - select column, right click mouse, format cells, on the number tab select date and then the format you require ("mmm dd" can be entered in the custom format).

Otherwise ensure that the spreadsheet you are pasting the data into is formatted in this way AFTER pasting.

George

Posted by Thomas Lotzer on February 14, 2002 7:12 AM

Thanks for the help!!!

Posted by Thomas Lotzer on February 14, 2002 7:13 AM

Thanks for the quick fix. I appreciate it.