Comments on: How to change date format in Excel and create custom formatting

The first part of our tutorial focuses of formatting dates in Excel and explains how to set the default date and time formats, how to change date format in Excel, how to create custom date formatting, and convert your dates to another locale. Continue reading →

Comments page 15. Total comments: 940

  1. How to format, date from 24.03.2017 to 24/03/2017
    Its not working despite having tried the custom format options.

  2. Good Info

  3. I calculated a formula for tenure and I want to custom format the tenure like this (e.g.: 05 Years, 08 Months and 15 Days).

  4. I need this format date:
    2019 111 (January, 11, 2019)
    The format yyyymmdd does not work for me
    20190111 (January, 11, 2019) It is incorrect
    My solution is
    year(SomeDate) & format(month(SomeDte),iif(month(SomeDate)<10," #","#")) & day(SomeDate)
    My question is then, is the correct way to do it?

    thank you

  5. Can I convert 04.05.2019 to 04/05/2019 i.e. from (.) to (/) separator. Anyhelp would be appreciated.

    1. format(SomeDate,"dd/mm/yyyy")

  6. how to change the date text of a cell written March, 2019 as Mar-19

    1. format(SomeDate,"dd of mmmm, yyyy")

  7. In excell if i enter number it is auto changing into date format, how to arrest it ?

  8. MS Excel and it's auto-date configuration.

    Anybody have a way to get around this problem?
    We have a few million rows of alphanumeric data that ranges from AAA0001 to ZZZ9999.
    When I export the data into Excel it converts some of these into dates.
    APR1899 = APR1899 <- Good
    APR1900 = Apr-00 <- Bad
    APR1901 = Apr-01 <- Bad
    and
    AUG1899 = AUG1899 <- Good
    AUG1900 = Aug-00 <- Bad
    AUG1901 = Aug-01 <- Bad

    The work around is to format the column as text before pasting it but I'd like to STOP Excel from auto formatting as a date.
    Anybody have a way to fix this?

    Thanks,
    Kenny

  9. How can I store my own date-time format so it's available in the drop down list?
    I'm constantly exporting data from SQL and have to convert it from this 47:10.7
    to this 03/08/2019 12:47:10.670.
    I'd like to have a saved date-time format as an option in the drop down.

    Thanks,
    Kenny

  10. How do I change 10/4/2002 to 10042002? Please help.

    Thank you

  11. Here is how to get a date to paste as text. 07/03/2019, March 7, 2019 You have copied this from somewhere and want to past it into your spread sheet and get the number. When you paste it you have to paste special, then choose text. For example Cell A6. Then in the next cell you have the formula =DATE(VALUE(RIGHT(A6,4)),VALUE(MID(A6,4,2)),VALUE(LEFT(A6,2)))
    Now in this second cell will show the date, in however which format you want. open Format cell and if you pick date , you can choose the style , if you pick text you will get the date number. I found out that when you copy and paste the format is copied also which screws things up, so you must past special.

  12. my formula is working =DATE(VALUE(RIGHT(A5,4)),VALUE(MID(A5,4,2)),VALUE(LEFT(A5,2)))
    it converts the text 28/02/2019 from the adjacent cell to 28-Feb-2019 and then I can switch the formatting to text and get the date number 43524. Now I try to paste 07/03/2019 as text and it won't let me, it keeps converting it to a date. It changes it to 7/3/2019. Then the formula won't work on a date, it needs text. I also changed my country to Canadian English and it converted 7/3/2019 to 03/07/2019 and when I change to text it is 43649. I can't paste into a cell and keep it as text ? If I go back to formatt and change it back to text and manually enter 07/03/2019 and enter, the formula correctly displays 7-Mar-2019 and 43535 is the number I get if I change formatting to text which is correct. But I cannot paste into a cell without excel changing it to a date. I only want the text not the date.

  13. Hello , I copy the date 07/03/2019 off a website and paste it into a cell with general number formatting, it pastes as 7/3/2019 and this is March 7,2019 not July 3. It also pastes into the right side of the cell and leaves a big margin to the left. Then I go to Format cell and click on text, it give me the number 43649, which is July 3 not march 7. Then if I go to format a second time and click on any other date format such as D-M-Y I get July-3-2019 and I cannot get back my original 7/3/2019 no matter what I do. Then I past 28/02/2019 and it pastes as 28/02/2019 and did not truncate the "0" in front of the two. This date format seems to be fixed, it is text and is not recognized by excel as a date at all. I can't believe excel has not fixed this problem. I am using excel 2013. Does excel ask you somewhere what your input country is ? Only USA has the month first. It really makes a mess of the sheet and I have already spent 2 hours trying to do a work around. Should not have to go to these lengths to fix this problem. I found this formula and it was working but now does not. =DATE(VALUE(RIGHT(A6,4)),VALUE(MID(A6,4,2)),VALUE(LEFT(A6,2)))

  14. May 8, 2019 3:30:00 PM GMT+05:30
    how to change this format to dd-mm-yy
    I need only date \
    plz help me.

  15. pls help me with excel dates. I want my dates to be February 08, 2019 or 02/08/2019.
    If I type 02/08 or 02/08/19, the result will be august 02, 2019 or 08/02/2019. how could I change the setting? I want to type it as 02/08 & result should be Feb 08, 2019 or 02/08/2019.
    thank you
    emme

  16. Hi

    I have a date format of 20190119 (yyyymmdd), and I would need to change it to 19.01.2019 (dd.mm.yyy), to be able to calculate the difference in days, between to days. Or any other date format, which allows to calculate the difference.

    I am preparing an AR days overdue template, and need to use columns for days overdue like 01-30 days overdue, 31-60 days overdue etc.

    Thankful for your help.

  17. I am trying to change birthdate from yyyymmdd to mm/yyyy in Excel and need help.

    example:

    19640716

    Need to update it to:

    07/1964

    Please help, thanks :)

  18. Sir, I have write a date format in excel i.e. 05.05.2016 but i want to change it automatically in 05/05/2016 with the formatting option, I have tried many times but nothing change, so please do the needful at the earliest.

  19. How do I format a cell so that when I type in a date all that I have to do is type in the numbers without "/" marks? For example: Typing in "012119" should read as "01/21/19"
    Every time I try to format the cell to a date and then type in a date without the slash marks I get some way off date yet every website I type in a date does this automatically.

  20. how i can change following "Oct 1, 2017 4:06:57 AM GMT+05:30 " in excel readable format, i cant filter the value, tried text to columns but failed.

    can you help.

  21. My calendar created in the academic year has decided to change the year to 2019 starting back to August, which means January now is 2020. How do I correct the year in the Academic year calendar?

  22. I was literally bitting off the end of my tail until I found this tutorial. I had trouble with Autofilling the days in date format because I did not know that excel's default dates functions with the one that is set with the computer. I followed the instructions here and changed the format to a preferred one. Thank you so much for this.

    Cheers!

    A. West

  23. Hi,

    I hope you can help. Whenever I type Nov 09, under Date format, it comes out as 01/11/2009.

    I used to be able to just type in Nov 09 and it comes out as 09-Nov-18. Or Nov 26 when entered is recognized by Excel as 01/11/2026.

    Any help will be appreciated. Thank you!

  24. Hi,

    i try this method and the format did change to the one i keyed in. but when i do month(), the return value is still wrong.

    Data
    06/12/2018 23:57

    format cells
    06/12/2018 23:57 as dd/mm/yyyy hh:mm

    is it due to my date values does not have any that is bigger than 12?

    1. Hello, Huimin,

      Could you please describe the problem you are having in more detail? It is not entirely clear what formula you apply exactly and what result you get then. Please specify.

      Thank you.

  25. I use the "CTRL;" to quickly enter the current date and hit "SPACE" and continue to enter text to provide updates for that date in the same cell. The problem I am having is that regardless of the regional settings for the short date format (in my case 14-Mar-12), it will always use "dd-mm-yyyy" (i.e. the default date type "*") the format I want is "dd-mmm-yy". Is there a way to change the default date type format? If I don't enter any text after and exit the cell it will change the format to the desired one. If you enter any text after it will not change it and it will keep it as dd-mm-yyyy (i.e. 02-04-2018). putting the date in a separate cell is not an option.

  26. How to convert 1999-05-05 to 05.05.1999

  27. Michalle:
    Right click on the cell containing the data and select Format Cells then Date, then select the 09/15/18 from the list then click OK.

  28. I am trying to change date format from 9/13/2018 to 09/15/2018 (mm/dd/yyyy). I am using Excel 2013, Thanks for your help!

  29. Hi
    I have to capture a lot of till slips for an account recon. I would like to enter, for example 2506 and get out 25/06/2018 or 25 Jun for example. I cannot seem to find how to do that. I tried following your examples using the RIGHT, MID and LEFT values but it wouldn't accept it even if i used it exactly as shown. I'm at a bit of a loss. Nothing on my format options works as the system is reading the input of 250618 or 2506 as a code for a particular date. Please help. Entering each slip date exactly as a date format will be tremendously laborious.

  30. Hello, Saurabh:
    To change the date format right click on the cell, choose Format Cells then choose Custom then from the list choose the dd/mm/yyyy h:mm format. If your list doesn't show this particular format choose the dd/mm/yyyy format and in the field above the list which shows the formats add h:mm to it.

  31. 12-10-2018 15:12 Plz Suggest this Format Cells How am change his format cells in DD-MM-YY?

  32. 01/10/2018 /3943 how can I change into normal date

    1. Jebin:
      Not sure what you mean by normal, but you can extract the first 10 characters like this:
      Where the data is in A2 enter this in an empty cell:
      =Left(A2,10)

  33. HOW CAN I CHANGE 01/01/2018 TO 01-01-2018 IN EXCEL 2007

  34. How do I change the date format. From for example 43372 to showing the exact date which is 9/30/2018. I've tried going to format calls but does not seem to work

  35. I am trying to format the date cell with 2 Sept 2018 with
    02-09-2018 But it's showing as 09-02-2018. Help

  36. Sir,
    I want to change date format from 18.08.18 to 18-Aug-2018

  37. I want date to be in 8-12-2018(8-Dec-2018) numeric format and hyphen instead of slash, is it possible?

    1. Abutalha:
      Format the cell as Custom.
      Right click the cell, select Format Cells then Custom and select the dd-mm-yy formatting from the list.

  38. Nivz:
    I usually use the DATEDIF function.
    It looks like this =DATEDIF(Start Date,End Date,"D")
    Where "D" tells Excel to return the difference in days.
    The dates can be cell addresses.

  39. Hello All,

    Can someone help me to check days between two dates.

    thanks in advance.

  40. Hi all,

    Can someone help convert the following:

    'Mon 17/09/2018' solely into '17/09/2018'

    All I want to do is delete the text

    1. Frank:
      If the only thing you want to do is return the date then this should work for you: =MID(B59,5,10)
      Where the data is in B59. The returned data will be text.

  41. 70924 change to 24-09-2007 and 170924 change to 24-09-2017. Pls help

  42. Hi,
    How can I copy numbers under conditions, in specific column in another sheets automatically?
    For example, I have a column containing various numbers in sheet1 and I want positive numbers copied in sheet2 and negative number copy to sheet3 automatically.
    thanks

  43. I want to change format of 29/08/18 11:20:01 to 29-Aug-18 11:20:01. Any help appreciated

  44. Hello Eddie,
    I am not quite sure what you trying to express.
    Can you explain with further details ?

    Thanks

  45. i was trying to make a cell change to the date for example if i insert "t" then the cell would automatically change the date 8/31/2018

  46. Hello,
    Is that a way, for the Excel 2010 to tell me directly (without having to go to Control panel and click Region and Language to check the Date and Times format or look at the bottom right corner of the PC).
    Eg, if my PC date format :MM/dd/yy , then Excel can give me the result of "MM/dd/yy"
    if my PC date format :dd-MMM-yy , then Excel will show me "dd-MMM-yy".

    Thanks

  47. Kate:
    If I understand your question you're asking how to remove two characters from the text string.
    I would remove them by using the SUBSTITUTE function with a nested SUBSTUTUTE formula like this:
    =SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(K17,"T",""),"Z", "")
    Where the problem string is in K17 this says to Excel substitute nothing for the "T" and nothing for the "Z".
    Now, you'll need to copy this down the column and it is only looking for "T" and "Z", but if your data has only a "T" and a "Z" to remove, this won't take a minute to copy down the column.
    You can of course substitute another letter or letters for the "T" and/or "Z" or something else for the "nothing".

  48. I'm having a problem in excel where I have downloaded a file and need to change the date format. It comes out looking like "2018-08-20T19:22:12.559Z" and I simply need it to look like "2018-08-20 19:22:12.559" The 'T' and 'Z' are inhibiting me from reading the file in R and doing what I need to do with it. I could simply change each cell, however I have over 3000 cells to change and that seems tedious.

  49. Dear Sir, I am finding MAXIMUM date in F Column and which is having 10000 rows, I have written code like this =MAX(F1:F10000) but is is not working where I tried with G column which is having Price but i am getting maximum price without issues, but in F columns unable to find maximum date.(Note: I think Date is written in Text format ),please provide Macros code on short.

  50. In my excel sheet, I have multiple dates in the format "07/15/2018 8:00" for instance. I changed the date to a serial number and as expected I got a floating number. When I ran the =WEEKDAY function on that cell, I keep getting a return of 1/15/1900. I have tried formatting the column to short date and running that format, but I still got the same result. Please help! I can't find much on the internet about solving this problem.

    Thanks

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