Excel 2000+XP copy/paste in new sheet drops 4 years from date

  • Thread starter Thread starter George Wilson
  • Start date Start date
G

George Wilson

I have a customer who is using Excel XP. He is copy and
pasting a date with format 10/20/2003 from one sheet to
another. When he pastes onto the second sheet it drops 4
years off the date. I tried this on my system also, I am
running Excel 2000 and I get the same behavior. Is there
some kind of date setup that I need to look at. I am
thinking this may be somehow related to the 1900/1904 date
issue, am I correct?
 
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.
 
This may "fix" the problem but does not help to explain
what has happened here. Anyone have any ideas?
-----Original Message-----
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.
Click to expand...
Edit|PasteSpecial|click Add (in the
 
One workbook had the base date set for 1900 and one workbook had a base date for
1904.

tools|options|calculation Tab|Near the bottom

(I thought that the original poster nailed it with his 1900/1904 date issue
remark.)
 
Thank you. I knew it had something to do with that but did
not know how to correct it.
Thanks again....
 
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