Copying Dates

[Noah]

I am copying dates from a website formatted in MMM-DD (e.g. Sep-12).
However, when I copy the dates into excel, it reads it as DD-MM (e.g. Sep-12
is copied as Dec-09). If I copy dates which cannot be transposed (such as
Oct-16) then it copies correctly as Oct-16.

Is there a way to
a) Copy the native dates into excel (e.g. Sept-12 as Sept-12)
b) Copy dates such that Excel does not interpret them as dates (e.g. Sept-12
is "Sept-12" not 09/12/2007 in the formula bar)
c) Easily transpose month and day (e.g. convert Dec-09 to Sept-12)

Thanks,
Noah

 

[Nick Hodge]

Noah

You have a few things at play here. If Excel 'converts' the dates then it
will take your locale settings as in Windows. The 'dates' that are not
converting, are being seen as text by Excel, not dates.

You might want to consider using the Data>Get external data>New web query as
a route to do this. When you take this route, just navigate to the web page,
click the table(s) you want to bring in and then under 'options' in the
browser dialog (top right I think), you can disable Excel's conversion of
dates.

--
HTH
Nick Hodge
Microsoft MVP - Excel
Southampton, England
(e-mail address removed)
web: www.nickhodge.co.uk
web: www.excelusergroup.org