Dates showing as serial number

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Guest

I have an excel sheet that has all the dates showing as serial numbers. For
example... 8/24/2007 shows as 39318 and 6/27/2007 shows as 39260. I have
tried changing the format of the cells but it stays as the number and change
to the date. Help please.
 
Tools|Options|View tab|uncheck formulas.



Tom said:
I have an excel sheet that has all the dates showing as serial numbers. For
example... 8/24/2007 shows as 39318 and 6/27/2007 shows as 39260. I have
tried changing the format of the cells but it stays as the number and change
to the date. Help please.
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What do you mean by:but it stays as the number and change to the date?
"Stays" as a number but "change" to date????
Excel stores dates as serial numbers with 1/1/1900 as zero. It is formatting
that get them to display as dates.
best wishes
 
change serial numbers back to dates in Excel



Tom Baxte wrote:

Dates showing as serial number
18-Jul-07

I have an excel sheet that has all the dates showing as serial numbers. For
example... 8/24/2007 shows as 39318 and 6/27/2007 shows as 39260. I have
tried changing the format of the cells but it stays as the number and change
to the date. Help please.

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Use the ISTEXT() function to check if your "numbers" are not text.
If they are text:
Copy an empty cell. Select your numbers, Paste Special, check Add.
Now they should be real numbers, so you can format them as Date.

--
Kind regards,

Niek Otten
Microsoft MVP - Excel


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What do you see in the formula bar when you select one of these offending cells?

If you see the date (like 10/12/2009) while the cell shows the serial number,
then I bet you're looking at formulas.

In xl2003 menus:
Tools|Options|view tab|Uncheck Formulas

In any version of excel, this setting can be toggled via
ctrl-` (control-backquote)
it's just to the left of the 1/! on my USA keyboard
 
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