copy pasting dates from one sheet to another

[Guest]

I cannot copy past a formatted date cell from one sheet to another - excel
automatically adjust the date by 2 days and 2 years. Any info?

 

[Daniel CHEN]

One possible reason is that you used two different date system:
menu: Tools>Option>Calculation Tab. >1904 date system.
(Not quite sure this is the case for your problem)

=====
Excel supports two date systems: the 1900 and 1904 date systems. The default
date system for Microsoft Excel for Windows is 1900. The default date system
for Microsoft Excel for the Macintosh is 1904. You can change the date
system. On the Tools menu, click Options, click the Calculation tab, and
then select or clear the 1904 date system check box.

The date system is changed automatically when you open a document from
another platform. For example, if you are working in Excel for Windows and
you open a document created in Excel for the Macintosh, the 1904 date system
check box is selected automatically.


--
Best regards,
---
Yongjun CHEN
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[Dave Peterson]

Are you sure it's not 4 years and one day?

If it were that, then I would guess that it was the difference between using a
1900 base date system and a 1904 base date system (tools|Calculation tab).

If that's the case, this may help:

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.

============
If it's really off by by 2 years and 2 days, I think I'd verify both
dates--format them in an unambiguous format: mmmm dd, yyyy.

Just to double check.

 

[Guest]

Thank you so much. I've been struggling to solve this issue for about 3
hours, and just by chance happened on this newsgroup. I appreciate your help!