Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Customize Your Date Formats


Most Excel users are familiar with the mm/dd/yyyy date format. It can, however, often be very convenient to use Custom Date Formats. It is surprisingly easy to set up custom formats on your worksheet, and this week’s blog will illustrate several highly practical and useful formats.

To customize the Date Formats of your cells, simply do the following:

1. Right-click the cell or range, and choose Format Cells from the dropdown
2. Choose Custom under the Category
3. Type in your Format Code in the Type dialog box

Using today’s date of June 20, 2012 as an example, I have created the following table that exemplifies this cool technique. Please Note the Formula in the Formula Box ( =TEXT($A$1, A4 ) which references cell A1 and the Format chosen:


By using Custom Date Formats, you can modify how Excel displays your dates, and maybe make your life just a little bit easier. Give it a try sometime! It really is easy…

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