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 6. Total comments: 936

  1. My hundreds of dates are entered with an abbreviation at the end of the day i.e. 22nd March 2022 and it hasn't accepted any of the normal ways of changing the format to 22/03/2022 - I know the 'nd' is causing the problem but can't figure my way around it - any help?

    1. Hello!
      Remove extra characters from text and convert to date using DATEVALUE function:

      =DATEVALUE(LEFT(A1,SEARCH(" ",A1)-3)&MID(A1,SEARCH(" ",A1),30))

      Set the date format you need in the cell as described in the article above.

      1. Thank you SOOOOO MUCH it worked a treat and has saved me so much time :)

  2. Difference between two dates with time to collect time difference between two dates for example Wed Apr 20 17:56:16 IST 2022 & Wed Apr 20 17:53:43 IST 2022 Please give answer with formula not manually because I have 30000 entries for work. Please help if any

  3. Excel stopped recognizing the Spanish date formats, it was working from January til March then it just stopped working during April.

    Example:
    Using VLOOKUP and 01 abr. as a reference, it doesn't count "01 abr" from the raw data.

    This worked from Jan to Mar using the same "everything". I just changed the month.

  4. Insanely simple, thank you

  5. I want to input 20032022 then excel will convert it to 20-Mar-2022. what is the custom format for that?

  6. how can Jan-2021 be read as January 2021 instead of being a text

    1. Hi!
      If I understand you correctly, use a custom date format as described in the article above -

      mmmm yyyy

  7. how to change 02.01.2022 to 02/01/2022?

  8. Monday, February 21, 2022
    CONVERT IN 02-21-2022
    FORMULA USING TEXT(RIGHT(N1044,LEN(N1044)-FIND(",",N1044)-1),"mm-dd-yyyy")
    BUT AFTER RESULT February 21, 2022
    I NEED CONVERT IN 02-21-2022

  9. I have date in format Feb-21, Mar-21 & so on till Jan-22. While converting this to year I am not able to do that, I am using formula Year it shows me a result 2022 for 2021 as well. Also, I am not able to convert it to date. Please help.

    1. Hello!
      Look closely at what date format is set in the cell. To do this, press CTRL+1. I think your date format is "mmm-dd".
      Feb-21 means 21 February 2022.

  10. Hi, I use mmmm or dddd and I get always fmonth or day names in small letters, but I would like that first letter is big just like Thursday but i get thursday. I use estonian language and may bet that is reason why all letters.

    1. Hello!
      Pay attention to what custom date format is set in this cell. If there is something like
      [$-F419]dddd, d mmmm yyyy
      then delete the regional settings [$-F419].
      I hope it’ll be helpful. If something is still unclear, please feel free to ask.

      1. Hello! and thank you for your replay but my problem are that all months and days of the week are in lower case (small letter). I put 1.04.2022 and Format Cells>NUmber>Custom I put mmmm because I would like to see only month or some other place weekday and result always I get april or monday not what i want April or Monday . I would like to see that first letter is big /upper. If I use formula =upper(a1) then all letters will be APRIL but I want that first letter is only upper

        2. That formula and 1.04.2022 will be Aprill

          =UPPER(LEFT(TEXT(A1;"mmmm");1))&""&LOWER(RIGHT(TEXT(A1;"mmmm");LEN(TEXT(A1;"mmmm"))-1))

          but is there a simpler method

  11. Is there a way to save custom formatting to a named option in the Date list

  12. Hello, I need to change a bunch of dates formatted like this: 2021-10-02, 1:47:40 PST
    to 10/02/2021. What formula can I use? Thanks.

  13. So i have a question if my date format reads as 01/02/2022 = Jan 2,2022 which is wrong because the month should be February is the a formular to correct such ?

  14. Hi - thank you for this very nice article :-)

    I am puzzled by this observation in my company: If I create a new workbook and enter in the same date (I type it in as "dd/mm") in three different cells and then;
    1: do nothing
    2: specify a custom format "dd-mm-yyyy" (typical Danish format)
    3: specify a custom format "mm/dd/yyyy" (typical US format)

    Then my first question is: why does the first cell display as "dd-mmm"? Or rather - why is the default cell format for date entries a custom format of "dd-mmm". Shouldn't it rather be the deafult Windows regional settings format ? If I want to change it, so going forward then my new spreadsheets just use the default Windows format - how can I do that.

    Secondly : when I send this spreadsheet by e-mail to a colleague in the US, then the date in the second cell (Danish format) is changed so it appears the same as in cell 3 (the US format). If I go to the trouble of enforcing a specific / custom format, then I would have assumed that this would be respected, even if it is send to another Excel user. Why is this not the case and is there anything I can do to enforce a particular date format, without having to actually enter in dates as text (or use formuals and stuff)?

    Br,
    Kim

    1. First questions:
      "Shouldn't it rather be the deafult Windows regional settings format?"
      There is no date format in windows regional settings, OOXML standard nor ISO 8601 formats without the year specified, so it seems to be a free interpretation/guess from excel where it transforms it to a date (with current year) but display just the information provided. I didn't fint documentation about it.

      "... how can I do that."
      If you add the year (at least yy) to the date, then it generally autoformats to your short date format regional setting. I didn't find a way for auto-transforming dd/mm to short date regional format though.

      Second questions:
      "... is there anything I can do to enforce a particular date format?"
      Add ";@" at the end, for example: "dd-mm-yyyy;@"

      "¿Why is this not the case...?"
      There is a list of number formats which their corresponding format code can change depending on the format settings of your operative system. Some, but not all, of these format codes are the ones with * mentioned in this article as Default date format; and "dd-mm-yyyy" with your regional settings is another one.
      When you use a format code that matches one of these format codes, excel saves its Id (numFmtId) but not the actual formatCode that your excel is displaying. So, when reading the file with another regional settings, excel could interpret it with a different formatCode.
      If your regional setting for short date is "dd-MM-yyyy" (default for Danish-Denmark), then the excel formatCode "dd-mm-yyyy" is associated with numFmtId 14 and it saves just that Id. When your friend opens the file, excel would interpret the numFmtId 14 according to his format settings (which should be m/d/yyyy for English-USA).

      https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/documentformat.openxml.spreadsheet.numberingformat

  15. Pls am having a problem with a date column. Some entries are showing datetime including PM and AM while others only show dates, but when I click on them it appears as both the date, time and PM on the formula tab. Pls how can i display just the dates. I don't need the time nor the PM or AM

  16. Hi,

    I want to update the format of ONLY date values from particular column which has all types of data values.

    Thanks,
    Riyaz

  17. I am past some 1-2,2-4...like this it will show 1-feb-2021,2-Apr-2021 how can slove entire cell one time pls give mee reply

  18. Hi
    I find a way to convert Gregorian date to another (e.g. persian calender) format, but what about if I want to convert persian calender into Gregorian (or other formats)??

  19. Hello, I am going crazy here... I am using Excel in a MacBook Pro, version 16.56. My problem is the following: I have a data table where in the first column I register a list of dates by the exact day when a sale has occurred and in the next column I register the amount of that sale. Now I want to create a bar chart that groups all these dates into months to show me the 12 totals of the monthly sales throughout the year, where the x-axis is the 12 months of the year, and the y-axis is the amount of the sales. Now, once I want to label the bar charts, instead of getting the total sales amount for a specific month, I get a label for each date of each sale. Basically the bar is composed of many bars stacked one on top of the other for each date, instead of being just the sum of the sales for that specific months as it should be. The result is I cannot get a label with the total monthly sales amount, by I get numerous labels inside the monthly bar chart labelling the amount of the sale for each date where that sale has occurred. Please somebody help me!

      1. Thank you, ok understood, I feared that, although it surprises me such a task is not performed by excel without having to do extra work to group the sales by month as well ;(

  20. dd-mm-yyyy hh:mm i want this date format in my all workbooks.. is there any way to set his globally ?

    1. Hello!
      The short and long date formats are retrieved from Windows Regional Settings. Open Windows Settings - Time & Language - Region - Change Data formats

  21. How would I go about formatting a column that has the information in years as dates. Since it is currently in the general number format I am unable to insert a timeline slicer. I have tried using the custom yyyy date but it converts all the dates to 1905

  22. How to keep the same format date of excel in CSV file?
    Because, when I converting a file from excel to CSV format. I noted some of the dates have changed from MM/DD/YYYY into DD/MM/YYYY. I wanted to keep the same data as MM/DD/YYYY.
    Appreciate your help. Thank you

    1. Hello!
      CSV is a plain text file. No formats are possible there. Try changing the system date format before converting.

  23. Hi! Could you please help us on how will we able to change the format from this day "Thu Oct 28 09:42:08 PDT 2021" to "MM/DD/YYYY" format only

    Appreciate your help!

    1. Hello!
      All recommendations on how to change the date format are described above in this article. If your date is written as text, then I recommend this guide: Convert text to date in Excel.
      Please try the following formula:

      =DATEVALUE(MONTH(1&MID(A1,5,3))&"-"&MID(A1,9,2)&"-"&RIGHT(A1,4))

  24. I could get what I want by dividing 365.25 by 12 then dividing the difference of the dates by the result of the division. Any other better way?

      1. I have an issue to replace date of day to start day of every date "Example" 19/4/2021 - 24/1/2021 - 27/8/2021 need to be change date of every example to be 1/4/2021 - 1/1/2021 - 1/8/2021 " is there any formula please to change the day of the date?

        Thanks for your support

  25. Hello, Please help,
    I want to calculate age in months and not in years between two dates, for example 15/01/2020 23/11/2021 1.86 years =(B1-A1)/365.25, this formula is used to calculate age in years. But I want the age to be in months and with two decimal places.

  26. I have some dates in this format. 13-01-1992. I want to be able to change to yyyy-mm-dd format in excel. I have tried changing from the format cells/custom format. but it does not seem to change. is there any formula you might know that can change ?
    thanks in advance

    1. Hello!
      I'm assuming your dates are written as text. Use these guidelines to convert this text to a date.
      I hope I answered your question. If you have any other questions, please don’t hesitate to ask.

  27. I have been able to pull the day (as text) from a date in another field (ex: 27 from 27 Sep 21) using TEXT(DAY(cell),"00").
    However, for my application, I would also like to be able to add another number to the day portion for scheduling purposes. For example, a single schedule for 27 Sep 21 would show as "727", but I would like to add 30 or 60 to show other scheduled activity for that day (to be shown as "757" and "787" respectively).
    What is the best way to accomplish this?
    The original formula is: If(MONTH(A36)=9,"7"&TEXT(DAY(A36),"00"),"")

    1. Hello!
      You can simply add 30 to your formula.

      =IF(MONTH(A36)=9,"7"&TEXT(DAY(A36),"00"),"")+30

      If the result is as text -

      =(IF(MONTH(A36)=9,"7"&TEXT(DAY(A36),"00"),"")+30)&""

      Hope this is what you need.

  28. one cell Take 7 Numeric Value For example (1112021). How to change Date formate.
    but which date is correct its (01-11-2021) or (11-01-2021) ?

    Pls Kindly send formula.....

  29. Hi sir,

    need your support to change the date format as below pasted date format not correct and not complete.

    09/17/21 15:53:42

    i want like 17/09-2021 15:53:42

    1. Hi!
      I hope you have studied the recommendations in the tutorial above. Replace in date format symbol / on -.

  30. Hi, How to convert 01-JUN-18 12.25.13.031000000 AM into 00:25:13 as the string is in AM. Also, how I convert the same string to time format in PM i.e. 12:25:13. Can someone help me with a formula with AM and PM?

    1. Hi!
      If I understand your task correctly, the following formula should work for you:

      =LEFT(A2,SEARCH(" ",A2,1)) + SUBSTITUTE(LEFT(SUBSTITUTE(MID(A2,SEARCH(" ",A2,1)+1,100),".","#",3), SEARCH("#",SUBSTITUTE(MID(A2,SEARCH(" ",A2,1)+1,100),".","#",3),1)-1) & RIGHT(A2,3),".",":")

      1. I will try the formula and update. Thanks Already.

        1. Hi Alex,

          I applied the formula. It gives correct time. But when I compare to 12:25:10 AM i.e. 01-JUN-18 12.25.10.031000000 AM it gives a difference of 23:59:57 which is too huge difference to consider.

          I tried with another formula before:

          =(SUBSTITUTE(MID(A2,11,8),”.”,”:”)+IF(AND(MID(A2,11,2)”12”,RIGHT (A2,2)=“PM”),0.5,0))+TIME (4,0,0)

          The difference from other timestamps are good. Like for above example, I get 00:00:03.

          Only, issue is with the formula is, it doesn’t identify 12:00:00 AM as 00:00:00 but identifies 12:00:00 PM as 12:00:00.so, I requested for a suggestion. Any update on the details would be helpful. Thanks already.

          1. Hello!
            12:00 am and 12:00 pm are shown differently in different countries. Excel defines 12:00:00 PM as 12:00:00 according to the international standard ISO 8601.

            1. I am trying to find difference between

              21-08-24 03:02:54 and 24-AUG-21 03.00.47.059641000AM. I have added time(4,0,0).

              I converted as 7:02:54 AM and 7:00:47 AM. When I subtract as per the above formula, it gives a difference of 23:57:53.

              When I convert the timestamps to number, it is 0.29 and 44432.29. I believe, the second number is counting the date also, that’s why making difference too huge. How can I resolve this? As difference should show as 0:02:07. Please suggest.

              1. Thank you for the time and effort Alex.

              2. To convert the 24-AUG-21 03.00.47.059641000AM, I have applied
                =LEFT(A2,SEARCH(" ",A2,1)) + SUBSTITUTE(LEFT(SUBSTITUTE(MID(A2,SEARCH(" ",A2,1)+1,100),".","#",3), SEARCH("#",SUBSTITUTE(MID(A2,SEARCH(" ",A2,1)+1,100),".","#",3),1)-1) & RIGHT(A2,3),".",":")

                Then for difference, I have applied =MAX(A2::B2)-MIN(A2:B2)

                Some, results for other timestamps are correct but some shows huge difference like above. How I can rectify this issue?

              3. Hi!
                If the formula shows the correct result for some data, then the formula is correct. I think that in some cells the data is written differently. Therefore, the result is wrong. Check the data. I can't help you anymore.

              4. No, both are 24 aug 2021. It’s just formats are different. I am subtracting 07:02:54 - 07:00:47.

              6. Hi!
                Explain what you are subtracting and what formula you are using. You cannot subtract 7:02:54 AM from 7:00:47 AM. Negative times are not possible. If from date 8/24/2021 3:00:47 subtract 8/21/2024 3:02:54 we get 2 days 23:57:53

  31. I am working with three timestamps:
    021928.000000, 21-09-02 02:39:51, 21-08-31 22:40:00. Converted to
    2:19:28 AM, 2:39:51 AM & 22:40:00 AM. Last timestamp is added 4 hours.

    Consecutive timestamp difference from the array is.
    0:20:23, 0:00:09.

    To find the max time difference , I have applied the formula in conditional formatting rule:

    =Q2=MAX($Q2:$S2).

    It doesn’t give 0:20:23 as max value but the value returns is 0:00:09.

    Please advise, if anything needs to be understood to improve the formula.

    1. Hello!
      You don't need to use a formula to highlight the maximum value. Use Conditional Formatting - Top/Bottom Rules - Top 10 Items - Format cells rank in the top set to 1.
      I hope this will help.

      1. Thanks a lot. I tried the same.

  32. Hello,

    I wanted to learn, how to convert "3 year(s), 10 month(s), 29 day(s)" into numbers like "3.8" or "4.1". Thank you!!

  33. Hi there,

    What is the excel formula for "07/2021 to 06/2022" in excel?

  34. There is a long list of date in this format 26-07-2021 11:39:00 AM, but when i convert them to date 26-07-202, few get converted but few are still in the same format

    Want to convert 26-07-2021 11:39:00 AM to 26-07-2021

    Can you share, how can that be done

  35. Can someone help me to extract time from

    30-jun-21 01.45.18.488173000 pm. to 01:45:18pm?

  36. Hi,
    I combined 2 excel files with dates in the formats "2021-07-28 13:00:00" and "8/18/21 10:00 AM".

    Using custom formatting, I changed all the dates to "2021-07-28 13:00:00" format. However, when I did a pivot chart on the table, I realized that the dates appeared in both formats.

    How do correct this so that all the dates appear in the format "2021-07-28 13:00:00".

    Thanks

  37. How convert this type value 20191115 to 15/11/2019

  38. The dates in my Google drive Excel file are confusing dates for months. Instead of 03 / 08 / 2021 reading as 3rd August, it's reading as 8th March. There are so many entries having similar issues, how do I correct this error without having to do the one after the other. So that it recognizes the month as day instead.
    Thank you.

  39. Which ever date i enter, it should appear as the 1st date of that month

  40. Hello all,

    May I ask how can I show my date like: 9-Aug-2021, with the input message by me be: 8/9/2021 please? Because if I input it that way (with month first, then date), it turns out like: 8-Sept-2021

    Thank you so much in advance!

  41. How can I convert from 7/14/2021 to 7/14 ?

    2. Define the column as DAte data type
      Apply custom format: M/d

      The underlying date will contain the year but it will not be displayed.

  42. That should have read day, date, month and year!

    Thanks

    Louise

    Louise says:
    August 5, 2021 at 4:11 am
    I would like all the day , date and year in the following format

    Mon, 23 Jan, 2021

    Is there anyway to do this in excel?

    Thanks

    Louise

  43. I would like all the day , date and year in the following format

    Mon, 23 Jan, 2021

    Is there anyway to do this in excel?

    Thanks

    Louise

    1. Hi!
      I hope you have studied the recommendations in the tutorial above. It contains answers to your question — ddd, dd mmm, yyyy

      1. Define the column as a Date data type in Home tab > Number group

        alternately
        ddd, d mmm, yyyy

        Single D does not display leading zero

        Alexander's format would display date

        Mon, 03 Jan, 2021

  44. Within a cell, I've been trying to suss out how to colour the day name differently from the date (in a lighter grey shade) to help the date stand out but keeping the day visible as it will jog the user's memory for the delivery they're checking.
    I know it's possible to change font colour between positive and negative numeric values and conditional formatting can be used to pick out different cell values in different colours but I can't find a format syntax to colour part cells.
    If you know of a way to use custom formats to colour different parts of a font string I'd be interested to hear. Just curious, don't expect there's many people want to do that!
    Until I find a better way I have duplicated the date column - one has the ddd format with grey font and the other column has the dd/mmm/yy format with black font.
    thanks

  45. Hello,

    How can i convert from July 24th 2021 to 24-07-2021

    Thanks

  46. How would I go about doing the opposite?
    e.g.

    from:
    25/09/2019 14:00:03.000
    to:
    2019-09-25T14:00:03.000Z

    Thanks again

      1. Yeah, I realized just after posting that, for doing it the other way around, it was easier to simply create a custom format that includes the T and Z in the required places.

        Thanks again

  47. Hi,
    How would formula would I need to convert the following time stamp formats?:

    from:
    2019-09-25T14:00:03.000Z
    to:
    25/09/2019 14:00:03.000

    Many thanks

      1. Thank you!

  48. hi,
    i want to insert serial wise numbers for particular month placed orders?
    Such as 21-year,07-month,and in that month placed orders one by one.

    i got upto (yy,mm PR). I want that to be in order like 210701 PR,210702 PR,210703 PR,210704 PR,210705 PR.

    Please help me out

  49. I have the issue that when I copy a BOM from another program I have certain numbers with the format "1.1.1" which are converted to "01.01.2001". This is fine when I copy them as I make sure they are formatted as text first.

    My problem however is this other program sometimes writes them as "1,1,1" with commas instead of full stops. Don't ask me why this happens. I copy and paste over like normal and use the find replace feature to change the commas to full stops. This is where Excel then decides to change the format back to standard and overwrite all my "1.1.1"s as "01.01.2001". When I then attempt to convert back to text it gives me the 1900 text of that date which is unwanted.

    How do I use find and Replace to change my commas to full stops without Excel reading it as dates? There are format options in the Find and Replace feature but when you use it I see it uses standard first and then converts to text for example. So I will quickly see a flash of "01.01.2001" and then it will turn into the 1900 text.

    Is there a way to Stop Excel reading "1.1.1" as a date and only use "1/1/1" for example?

      1. Sorry but as I said this doesn't work as the Find and Replace function overwrites this. Even when I set the desired format with the Find and Replace function I see that it converts with Standard format and overwrites as text afterwards, giving me a date as 1900 text.

          1. My process is:

            Format column as text
            Copy BOM into column (formatted with commas "1,1,1")
            Highlight column and Find and Replace all commas with full stops.
            Find and Replace changes these to Dates

            When I click on options in Find and Replace to format as text it formats first to dates and then as 1900 text so I end up with 443829 instead of the "1.1.1" that I want.

  50. Dear Sir,

    I need to keep type in my excel date as 02 AUGUST 2021. Month has to be full block letters (capital letters). please help

    1. Hello!
      This is only possible when converting date to text.

      =TEXT(A1,"dd")&" "&UPPER(TEXT(A1,"mmmm"))&" "&YEAR(A1)

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