Display day of week in Taskbar without impacting Excel

Question

With Windows 8.1, I would like the current day of the week (or abbreviation thereof) to show in my taskbar along with or alongside time and date, without ramifications for Excel and, preferably, no other consequences either*.

Adding the day of the week is easy applying Anand Khanse’s tip but this causes changes to Excel’s operation that are not acceptable to me. My Google foo is not turning up alternatives to AnandK@TWC’s approach.

Is there another way that might suit me please**?

* Should have mentioned before that, in addition to all my other unreasonable demands, I would like the solution to work with two monitors (Extended Desktop), in view of the likes of.

** I am amenable to applying Anand's solution if coupled with an Excel 2013 fix that would return the same functionality to Excel as before Anand's solution.

Answer 1

Maybe thats not what you want, but you can make the taskbar double the height and it will show the day of the week automatically.

To do that, right-click on a free place on the taskbar and deactivate Lock the Taskbar (images). Then position your mouse cursor at the top of the task bar and drag it to the desired height. (Thanks to ComFreak for providing the detailed explanation).

Answer 2

If you don't want to change the size of the taskbar, you can use T-Clock Redux or alternatives to customize the taskbar clock format (and font/fontsize to make it fit with line breaks). Example format: hh:nn\ndddd (\n stands for newline).

Answer 3

Does Excel have a place where you can set the date format separately in options?