How to use date formatting in Excel

Abstract

In this lesson we’ll take a look at the Date format.

The Date format is flexible and can display the same date in many different ways.

Let’s take a look.

Here we have a set of dates in column B of our table.

Let’s start off by copying these dates to all columns.

Let’s look first at the Short Date and Long Date formats.

This means that dates in these formats may look different on different computers.

Access this dialog using any of the techniques covered previously.

We’ll use several methods here.

The date format in column H includes time.

As with other number formats, note that the value stored in each cell doesn’t change.

Only the display is different for each format.