Excel formatting

[Nicolas Dumeige]

Hello,

I have a column with date data.

1) I fail to understand how it's possible tell Excel how to deal with the data and at the same time choose another presentation.

2) Once Excel has screwed the formatting, the damn *ù@#!$£ won't let me get the original data ! I mean, I tryed to change the format, was not satisfy and wanted to put the old way - not with ^Z, I'had made other changes I wanted to keep - but with format "text" or "general".

I don't know if I'm very clear, but this kind of stuff troubles me.

[Bruno Ganino]

Nico, I do not understands your problem.
The structure of a cell of type Date, has various ways of presentation.
If you have modified this format and have made it become first date, after text and subsequently have saved the line with the same name. Then you perhaps don't can more recover the data in the original format.
But
i have understood your question ?

Bruno

[Nicolas Dumeige]

there is what's in the cell, it's content. For instance : 01/04/04 08:17.

Now, do you where is what ?
Is it a dd/mm/yy hh24:MM or mm/dd/yy at 08:17 PM ....

I do now what I've put in the column but how Excel will figure out ?

My question is : how do you tell Excel how to interprete the cells content and how do you change the formatting you want to see or print. If both answer are formatting, there something wrong here !

Any idea ?

[Hazem Mahmoud_3]

Right-click on cell (or cells after highlighting them), then select "Format cells..." and go to the "Number" tab and you can select the formatting of the numbers there. Hope that helps!

-Hazem

[Ganesh Babu · Accepted solution]

Hi Nico,
Excel formats the dates based on your settings in the "regional and language options" (Control Panel -> Regional and language options)

Take the same example

Regional setting is
-------------------
Short Date - 4/19/2004
Time - 10:30:08 AM

Then Excel formats this date 01/04/04 08:17
as dd/mm/yyyy hh24:mm

it will be 01/04/2004 08:17 AM

If u want it in a different way by Default then u have to change the regional settings.

Hope i understood your question.

Ganesh

[Bruno Ganino]

Nico, you must to set the format that you want also to:
Start -> Settings -> ControlPanel -> International-Settings (choose Date, Time, Number, etc.)

HTH
Bruno

[Nicolas Dumeige]

Thanks for the info

My personal quote : Excel sucks !