Taming Excel

[lemel_man]

I'm a newbie as far as Excel is concerned. I'm using Excel 2003 and
having 2 problems that, coincidently, involve dates.

1. I want today's date to display as "01 September 2007", say. I used
the NOW function and got "01/09/2007 12:38". Although I would prefer to
get the month as "September" I would settle for the format I got, but
without the time stamp. I then tried the TODAY function and got
"01/09/2007 00:00", with a zero time stamp. I tried trimming it off with
the MID function - using MID(NOW(),1,10) and got 39326.5294, so how do I
get what I want?

2. The application of this SS contains numbers of the form 07/01 or
07/11. I entered 07/01, 07/11, 07/15 and 07/25, but these display as
07-Jan, 07-Nov, Jul-15, and Jul-25 respectively.

What is it with Excel? On the one hand it won't format correctly (as I
want it) something that it and I know as a date, and on the other hand
it insists on interpreting as a date something that certainly isn't.

 

[Bob Phillips]

1. Use a format, Format>Cells>Custom, of mmmm

2.Enter with a leading single apostrophe, '07/01

--
HTH

Bob

(there's no email, no snail mail, but somewhere should be gmail in my addy)

 

[*alan*]

I'm a newbie as far as Excel is concerned. I'm using Excel 2003 and having
2 problems that, coincidently, involve dates.

1. I want today's date to display as "01 September 2007", say. I used the
NOW function and got "01/09/2007 12:38". Although I would prefer to get
the month as "September" I would settle for the format I got, but without
the time stamp. I then tried the TODAY function and got "01/09/2007
00:00", with a zero time stamp. I tried trimming it off with the MID
function - using MID(NOW(),1,10) and got 39326.5294, so how do I get what
I want?

2. The application of this SS contains numbers of the form 07/01 or
07/11. I entered 07/01, 07/11, 07/15 and 07/25, but these display as
07-Jan, 07-Nov, Jul-15, and Jul-25 respectively.

What is it with Excel? On the one hand it won't format correctly (as I
want it) something that it and I know as a date, and on the other hand it
insists on interpreting as a date something that certainly isn't.

1. Select your Date column.
Format Cells > Number Tab>select Date.
Scroll down the "Type" column to select the date format you want. (In my
Excel2003, the example given is 14-Mar-2001).
Click OK.
Forget the NOW and TODAY functions.
To enter today's date, just press CTRL+;
(sorry, don't know how to get it to go beyond 3-letter month abbreviations)

2. Select your Form Numbers column.
Format Cells > Number Tab>select Text.
Click OK.
Your form numbers should not now change to dates.

 

[lemel_man]

Thank you. Both solutions worked fine.
But I'm still surprised at the lack of consistency in such a prestigious
product.

 

[Ron Rosenfeld]

Thank you. Both solutions worked fine.

But I'm still surprised at the lack of consistency in such a prestigious
product.

It works precisely as documented.
--ron