format date 20040701

  • Thread starter Thread starter Kathy
  • Start date Start date
K

Kathy

I am totally stumped. I have a column that is populated
with dates that are formatted like.... 20040701. I
would like the change the format to 07-01-2004, I am
unable to. The cell gets and error and is viewed as
#########. Any ideas? Thanks
 
Apologies if you are not new to excel but first thought is try widenin
the column that the cell is in
 
Kathy said:
I am totally stumped. I have a column that is populated
with dates that are formatted like.... 20040701. I
would like the change the format to 07-01-2004, I am
unable to. The cell gets and error and is viewed as
#########. Any ideas? Thanks
Click to expand...

If you mean this column contains cells whose contents are numbers like
20040701 rather than holding date serial numbers, then Excel won't believe
they're dates (otherwise it couldn't distinguish them from 20,040,701 unless
all numbers contained punctuation making their interpretation obvious).

To convert such numbers into date serial numbers, which Excel does consider
to be dates, the easiest way is to select the entire range containing these
dates, then run Data > Text to Columns, choose Fixed Width in the first
dialog and click Next>, immediately click Next> in the second dialog, and in
the third dialog in the 'Column data format' box select Date and choose YMD
in the drop-down list to the right of Date, then click Finish. This should
convert your cell contents into date serial numbers which you could format
as dates.
 
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