Interpret dates put into Excel as mm/dd

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I would like to input dates in an Excel worksheet using Swedish format dd/mm, however Excel interprets this as mm/dd. That is, writing "7/8" in a cell is converted into Excel date (2019-07-08, YYYY-MM-DD). Other questions asked refer to changing mm/dd/yyyy to dd/mm/yyyy, which can be done through Windows settings, however I can't find a way of changing the mm/dd format.

A string based solution would work as suggested in some answers, however the reason I am asking is because I was manually inputting dates from a list of dates in dd/mm format, and it was annoying to have to twist every date in my head, or (while it would obviously work and be more robust) to have to set up e.g. two columns for month and day.

Toivo Säwén

Posted 2019-02-11T10:55:28.067

Reputation: 101

3Check Excel's locale setting. If that's set to Sweden's standard, it should accept dates in dd/mm rather than mm/dd. Once the dates are understood correctly, you can play with the format to display it the way you want. – fixer1234 – 2019-02-11T11:26:07.103

@fixer1234 I followed this guide: https://www.webucator.com/how-to/how-set-locale-microsoft-excel.cfm, Locale (in my Swedish Excel it says "Language") is set to Swedish, still doesn't work. Can I change Locale setting someplace else?

– Toivo Säwén – 2019-02-11T11:28:39.770

I don't have ready access to Excel, but that link looks like it deals with just the display format. There should be application settings in the main menu with a locale setting that controls how Excel views everything. – fixer1234 – 2019-02-11T11:32:29.257

@fixer1234 I agree :) can't find it... – Toivo Säwén – 2019-02-11T11:33:03.487

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Check this out. The link is for Excel 2016, but it's probably similar: https://edu.gcfglobal.org/en/excel-tips/understanding-regional-differences-in-excel/1/

– fixer1234 – 2019-02-11T11:34:55.300

Just following up. Did that link get you to the Excel locale setting? – fixer1234 – 2019-02-11T23:13:07.863

@fixer1234 Thanks for checking in, that did take me to the locale setting which was set to follow Windows, however this didn't fix the specific issue (no way in Windows of setting how to interpret a XX/YY date). – Toivo Säwén – 2019-02-12T08:32:00.990

Answers

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You can always set it like a string, which can be more convenient and less convenient depending on your case

Let's say you have the date you want in one column, "B" for this example(you cna hide it), you would do the following:

=Text(day("B2");"00")&"/"&text(month("B2");"00")

Excel is very picky about dates in formats different from us dates "mm/dd/yyyy"(and variations), internally it will try to convert any date if it fits the US date template. I have been bited by this more than a couple of times, because we use "dd/mm/yyyy" in my country so with dates like "01/04/2018" excel sometimes goes nuts.

dmb

Posted 2019-02-11T10:55:28.067

Reputation: 1 166

Yes, this would work. The reason I am asking is because I was manually inputting dates from a list of dates in dd/mm format, and it was annoying to have to twist every date in my head, or (while it would obviously work and be more robust) to have to set up e.g. two columns for month and day. – Toivo Säwén – 2019-02-11T13:44:06.953

1@ToivoSäwén Sorry didn't get that from the question. Anyway Excel is not that nice with other date formats. Even if you set up your locale vars and specify cell date format, there is chance it will get mixed up – dmb – 2019-02-11T13:47:00.650

Asked: 2019-02-11T10:55:28.067

Viewed: 74 times

Active: 2019-02-11T13:51:05.590