Why does excel default to date format

Try specifying a custom number format of mm-dd-yy , that should do the trick. Incidentally, General is a number format that can cause headaches sometimes - Excel decides for itself what type of value it thinks you entered in a cell.

I tend to stay away from General and explicitly pick my number formats where possible. I have just answered this on another page and hoped this may help, if you are having this issue on Windows 10 then the best and complete solution is to install the "English United Kingdom " language pack.

This can be found by going to: Control Panel [make sure you select 'view by: Small icons' in the top right so you can see all items] then select 'Language'. Here you will see the default "English United States " option with "enabled" against it and should see the "English United Kingdom " option below.

Just wait for it to install then highlight the recently installed option and click the 'move up' button so that this becomes your default.

It should display "Will be enabled on next sign-in". It will do exactly that, after a reset it will be enabled and should be your default.

Sometimes you can enter a rule and it still doesn't work. Thus, if you have "European times" as preferences, it will consider your set of data format as being "European" no matter that it is a US format, Excel does not know it. Once you have done this, close your Excel format and then reopen it to make sure that these changes will apply to your data set. After this, depending of what you want to achieve, you can apply different formula to convert your data column A into the right date format:.

Normally, it should automatically be considered by Excel as a date. You can check this by applying a filter to your data it will be classified by years, months and days. Try this:- Set format of cell to text and enter date. Now change the format of cell to general. The cell does not automatically change the format to date, but leaves it as general.

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Learn more. How do I keep Excel from changing my date format? Ask Question. Asked 6 years, 9 months ago. Active 4 months ago. Viewed 82k times. Pretty basic question for a more advanced user than me but I can't seem to find an option. Improve this question. David David 1 1 gold badge 3 3 silver badges 13 13 bronze badges. Are you sure specifying a custom number format of mm-dd-yy doesn't work for you?

Thanks, new to Excel. A KeynoteSupport. Dates can be entered in a worksheet cell with 2-digit or 4-digit years. There is no confusion with a 4-digit year. But how does Excel know which century to use if a 2-digit year is entered? If these defaults don't suit, the cutoff of 29 can be changed in the regional settings of many operating systems. Directions for the Windows operating system follow. Even if you need to format a single cell in your sheet. Unfortunately it did not work for me.

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Follow these steps to do your formatting: Select the cell or cells you want to format. Choose Cells from the Format menu. Excel displays the Format Cells dialog box. Make sure the Number tab is selected. Click Date at the left side of the dialog box. See Figure 1. Figure 1. The Number tab of the Format Cells dialog box. Using the Locale drop-down list, choose a country or region that uses the date format you want to use. In the case of Jerry's need, picking English United Kingdom is a good choice.

Excel modifies the date formats available to you. Select the desired date format. Click on OK. Author Bio. Numbering Equations Word allows you to easily number a variety of elements in your document. Discover More. Deleting the Open Document File Want to delete the document you are currently viewing? Changing Character Spacing Excel allows you to adjust spacing between cell walls and the contents of those cells.

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