Automatic date formatting changes

Hello Sophie,

Hope you enjoyed your Microsoft Excel Intermediate course with Best STL.

Thank you for your question regarding automatic date formatting changes.

Excel has never been very forgiving when entering dates and expecting the format to be as entered. Excel changes the format from General to Custom and defaults to whatever you see in the cell. On my computer (using 2010) the Custom format is Jan-13 after I have entered January 2013 into a cell.

Unfortunately, Excel does not give you the option to change the default for dates, so what I usually do is if an entire column will have dates then I select the whole column and set the date format to however I wish to see it. Otherwise, select the cells that require a date input and format them all according to the date format required.

I hope this resolves your question. If it has, please mark this question as resolved.

If you require further assistance, please reply to this post. Or perhaps you have another Microsoft Office question?

Have a great day.
Regards,

Rodney
Microsoft Office Specialist Trainer