Copy-Paste sheets - error in the dates

[Aninha]

when I copy from one sheet to the clipboard and then paste into another
sheet, I sometimes get a change in the year of the date. The change is
usually 4 years, say from 2004 to 2000. I have no idea why this
happens, unless it has something to do with incompatibilities between
PC and MAC or between different versions of Excel, say Excel ’97 and
Excel 2000. There is anybody who could help me on this please?
::::

 

[Dave Peterson]

One workbook was using a base year of 1900 and the other was using 1904.
(tools|options|calculation tab|1904 date system)

One way to add those four years back is to find an empty cell, put 1462 into
that cell.

Copy that cell.

Select your range that contains the dates. Edit|PasteSpecial|click Add (in the
operation box).

You may have to reformat the cell as a date (mine turned to a 5 digit number).
But it should work.

You may want to do it against a copy...just in case.

(I'm not sure which one you'll fix. You may want to edit|pastespecial|click
subtract.)

Most windows users use 1900 as the base date. Mac users (mostly??) use 1904 as
the base date.