software

I selected a cell to be formatted as a date (MS example 03/14/01)

When I key 120199 in that cell it displays in as 02/02/29......Why?
I even went into the Control Panel then Regional Settings for Date.

Gracie

You need to put in the slashes when you input a date:

12/01/99

If you input something that Excel recognises as a date, it will format the
cell automatically, although it might not be exactly what you want.

Regards

Trevorquot;Graciequot; gt; wrote in message
...
gt;I selected a cell to be formatted as a date (MS example 03/14/01)
gt;
gt; When I key 120199 in that cell it displays in as 02/02/29......Why?
gt; I even went into the Control Panel then Regional Settings for Date.
Dates are numbers
120199 = 02/02/29

If you enter 1 in a cell and format it like a date you get this
1/1/1900

Enter the / between the YMD or if you want to enter only numbers see
www.rondebruin.nl/qde.htm--
Regards Ron de Bruin
www.rondebruin.nlquot;Graciequot; gt; wrote in message ...
gt;I selected a cell to be formatted as a date (MS example 03/14/01)
gt;
gt; When I key 120199 in that cell it displays in as 02/02/29......Why?
gt; I even went into the Control Panel then Regional Settings for Date.
Hello Gracie,

Even though you have formatted the cell to be a date you will still have to
type the slashes, ie. 12/01/99.

When you type in a number Excel calculates what the date would be that
number of days since 01/01/1900. So 02/02/29 is really 02/02/2229 which is
120199 days since 01/01/1900.

Judith

--
Hope this helpsquot;Graciequot; wrote:

gt; I selected a cell to be formatted as a date (MS example 03/14/01)
gt;
gt; When I key 120199 in that cell it displays in as 02/02/29......Why?
gt; I even went into the Control Panel then Regional Settings for Date.

Dates are stored as serial numbers. The serial number for February 2nd, 2229
is the number 120199. 120199 represents the number of days from 1/0/1900
(1/1/1900 equals 1). Enter your dates with hyphens quot;-quot; or slashes quot;/quot;. For
more information look in the help under quot;enter a datequot;, and quot;How Microsoft
Excel stores dates and timesquot;.

quot;Graciequot; wrote:

gt; I selected a cell to be formatted as a date (MS example 03/14/01)
gt;
gt; When I key 120199 in that cell it displays in as 02/02/29......Why?
gt; I even went into the Control Panel then Regional Settings for Date.