Date Conflict: Excel/Powerpoint 1904/1900 Date Convention

[Bravo_Whiskey]

Version: 2008 Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) Processor: Power PC I've been suffering with the date conflict between the two conventions (MS starts counting at 1900 and Apple starts counting at 1904 so the serial dates stored in the machines are 1462 days apart: 4 years and 1 day) for some time now.

Most of the time one can get by with importing excel graphs by setting the Excel program on the Mac to use the 1904 date convention (preferences advanced). However once the graph is in your Powerpoint, if you then send the presentation to someone else to print (Kinko's or a colleague for example) you could end up with bad dates again depending on THEIR settings.

This challenge is particularly pernicious at Kinko's (now FedEx Office) if you're trying to print a presentation while on the road, because Kinko's doesn't set all of their machines to the same convention (in fact they're unaware of this problem) and some places will ADD 1462 days to your dates and some places will SUBTRACT 1462 days to your dates. My work-around to this problem is to append a second pair of graphs to the end of my presentation so that the slide book has THREE versions of each dated graph: one with Mac dates, one with 1462 ADDED and one with 1462 SUBTRACTED. When the books print you pick the good graph, throw out the bad ones and bind. It's nuts!

Now however, I have a colleague with a Mac and the exact same vintage Office for Mac (2008) program. When he sends me (we're both on Macs mind you) a PPTX all the dates show up with 4 extra years in them!

What gives? Is there anyway to solve this problem? Can graphs be imported to Powerpoint and then "fixed" in place (without making them fuzzy looking .jpegs of course)? Is there a way to specify in Powerpoint the date convention to use? Excel lets you pick 1900 or 1904, but I can't find something similar in Powerpoint.

 

[CyberTaz]

Hello Bravo_Whiskey;

There's more going on here than someone is being forthcoming about & I'm
afraid you've been seriously misinformed.

The date system used in any given Excel file is workbook-specific regardless
of which version of Excel creates it. True, the default in Win Excel is 1900
whereas 1904 is the default for Mac Excel, but under normal conditions that
is totally transparent to the user. IOW, the dates in a workbook do not
change just because the file was created by one & then opened by another.

When the discrepancy arises it's usually due due to one of 3 causes:

1- Someone copies data from a workbook based on one date system & pastes
into a workbook which is based on the other,

2- If links to cells containing dates are created between workbooks of
different date systems, &

3- If someone changes the date system in a workbook *after* dates have
already been entered. [Excel> Preferences> Calculation on a Mac, Office
Button> Excel Options> Advanced in Excel 2007, Tools> Options> Calculation
in Excel 2003 & prior]

Even calculations involving dates & using functions which call system date
information (such as TODAY())will be accurate if the file is *opened* by any
version of Excel regardless of which date system the file is set to use.

My best guess here is that the data was in fact copied from a file using one
date system then pasted to create the charts. The date conversion occurred
instantaneously but most likely went unnoticed at the time. It wasn't until
the *charts* looked wrong that someone rechecked the data & noticed that the
dates were off.

Regards |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[Bravo_Whiskey]

Unlikely that it was overlooked at the time the excel graphs were imported into the powerpoint slide. I commented to my colleague on the bad dates while we were both looking at the two presentations: his dates were right, mine were 4 years into the future. Then when I sent him back the slides with my text edits he could open the powerpoint presentation and all of the dates were back to normal! This is with two Macs running the same version of Leopard and the same version of Office. The Kinko's scenario is similar: I proof the charts before sending them to Kinko's but when Kinko's opens them the dates are different.

Hello Bravo_Whiskey;
>
> There's more going on here than someone is being forthcoming about & I'm
> afraid you've been seriously misinformed.
>
> The date system used in any given Excel file is workbook-specific regardless
> of which version of Excel creates it. True, the default in Win Excel is 1900
> whereas 1904 is the default for Mac Excel, but under normal conditions that
> is totally transparent to the user. IOW, the dates in a workbook do not
> change just because the file was created by one & then opened by another.
>
> When the discrepancy arises it's usually due due to one of 3 causes:
>
> 1- Someone copies data from a workbook based on one date system & pastes
> into a workbook which is based on the other,
>
> 2- If links to cells containing dates are created between workbooks of
> different date systems, &
>
> 3- If someone changes the date system in a workbook *after* dates have
> already been entered. [Excel> Preferences> Calculation on a Mac, Office
> Button> Excel Options> Advanced in Excel 2007, Tools> Options> Calculation
> in Excel 2003 & prior]
>
> Even calculations involving dates & using functions which call system date
> information (such as TODAY())will be accurate if the file is *opened* by any
> version of Excel regardless of which date system the file is set to use.
>
> My best guess here is that the data was in fact copied from a file using one
> date system then pasted to create the charts. The date conversion occurred
> instantaneously but most likely went unnoticed at the time. It wasn't until
> the *charts* looked wrong that someone rechecked the data & noticed that the
> dates were off.
>
> Regards |:>)
> Bob Jones
> [MVP] Office:Mac
>
>
>
> On 3/17/10 1:14 PM, in article (e-mail address removed)2ac0,
> "[email protected]" wrote:
>

> > Version: 2008 Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) Processor: Power PC
> > I've been suffering with the date conflict between the two conventions (MS
> > starts counting at 1900 and Apple starts counting at 1904 so the serial dates
> > stored in the machines are 1462 days apart: 4 years and 1 day) for some time
> > now.
> >
> > Most of the time one can get by with importing excel graphs by setting the
> > Excel program on the Mac to use the 1904 date convention (preferences
> > advanced). However once the graph is in your Powerpoint, if you then send the
> > presentation to someone else to print (Kinko's or a colleague for example) you
> > could end up with bad dates again depending on THEIR settings.
> >
> > This challenge is particularly pernicious at Kinko's (now FedEx Office) if
> > you're trying to print a presentation while on the road, because Kinko's
> > doesn't set all of their machines to the same convention (in fact they're
> > unaware of this problem) and some places will ADD 1462 days to your dates and
> > some places will SUBTRACT 1462 days to your dates. My work-around to this
> > problem is to append a second pair of graphs to the end of my presentation so
> > that the slide book has THREE versions of each dated graph: one with Mac
> > dates, one with 1462 ADDED and one with 1462 SUBTRACTED. When the books print
> > you pick the good graph, throw out the bad ones and bind. It's nuts!
> >
> > Now however, I hav