Entering Dates

[kmkx70a]

I would like to enter dates with just the month and day. When I do, Excel
automatically enters the year also. this really messes up sorting. I want to
enter the date with out the year showing up. I format the cells with mmm/dd
but that doesn't help.
Any help would be appreciated. Harry

 

[Guest]

Excel dates normally include a year, even if it not displayed by reason of
formatting. you can always enter:

'jan 21

note the single quote. I don't know what you would accomplish by doing
this, since it would be just text to Excel, not a date.

 

[Gord Dibben]

"kmkx70a"

Just a thought about this.

If you want to sort on Month or Day you can use a helper column(s) with the
MONTH or DAY functions and sort on them.


Gord Dibben MS Excel MVP

 

[Fred Smith]

Your sorting won't be messed up if the year is always the same.

You could enter text by preceeding the entry with an apostrophe, as in:

'12/31

This will sort, but will not allow you to use date formats like mmm/dd.

I think your best bet is to let Excel do what it likes. It will append the year
2007 to your entry, but do it consistently so you can sort and format without
any trouble. A year from now, you'll have to change any old dates to 2008, but
that wouldn't take very long.