Dates Puzzle

[Guest]

Hi,

I have a file from someone with dates appearing to be formatted in the
following custom format mm/dd/yy;@
When I copy them, they change to “actual†date according to their serial
number.

So custom formatted 04/21/87 when copied to another workbook transforms to
04/20/83 (30,426 serial number).

I know how to preserve the dates by using = Date (Year(), month(), day())
function. But can someone please explain why this is happening, since in the
future it could be easily overlooked when copying and pasting.


Thanks for your input!
Using 97 on Windows NT

 

[Frank Kabel]

Hi
all date values are internally represented by this serial number. So
you just have to format the cells accordingly

 

[Ron Rosenfeld]

Hi,

I have a file from someone with dates appearing to be formatted in the
following custom format mm/dd/yy;@
When I copy them, they change to “actual” date according to their serial
number.

So custom formatted 04/21/87 when copied to another workbook transforms to
04/20/83 (30,426 serial number).

I know how to preserve the dates by using = Date (Year(), month(), day())
function. But can someone please explain why this is happening, since in the
future it could be easily overlooked when copying and pasting.


Thanks for your input!
Using 97 on Windows NT

One workbook is using the 1900 date system; the other is using the 1904 date
system.


--ron