Excel 2003 date format bug?

[Guest]

I have a problem with dates
Dates with day > 12 are reproduced in text format, but otherwise correct,
days <=12 as MM/dd/yyyy.
My pc is set to UK short date format dd/MM/yyyy etc. in Control Panel.

(An external app creates the data, and it was OK with office98).
I saw a Microsoft note that says this is a problem when using VBA and Excel
2000/2002, and it describes this problem exactly. I can't see a note on
Excel/Office 2003. Does anyone know if same bug is present?... and if so, is
there an SP update/hotfix for it?
thanks
chris

 

[Nick Hodge]

Chris

I'm not familiar with the bug but versions of XL before XP were awful at any
locale conversions based on dates. That is no account was taken of regional
settings in control panel.

Since XP this has been slightly better, therefore I would expect the data
application you have is making allowances for Excel's inadequacies pre XP,
which are now corrected by your upgrade

--
HTH
Nick Hodge
Microsoft MVP - Excel
Southampton, England
(e-mail address removed)

 

[Bryan Hessey]

I used to have problems as you described, especially operating between
Excel 97 and Excel 2000 and 2003 on Windows 2000 and XP.

One thing I did notice that helped me was that Excel 97 set the column
format from the first date in the column, if it was 13/01/04 all was
ok, if it was 12/01/04 the problem you describe appeared. (I use
dd/mm/yy)

With Excel 2000 and later, when you import data you can select the form
of date to be used for the whole column, (on the third import screen),
which was MOST useful.

Once the date is set as 'text' and dates (displayed on the left and
right side of the column) it was difficult to correct.

Was your data imported, and can you select the date format for the
column?