Dates in Excel

[Bandit]

I am running Excel X on my Mac OS X. I recently copied a worksheet to
create a new document which contains dates - it is a simple membership
listing. However when I re-format the date columns in the new
spreadsheet from the numeric details that have copied over, the dates
that result are 4 years and a few days later than the same numerics in
my old spreadsheet. e.g. a date of 38283 = 23/10/04 on the old is now
showing as 24/10/08 on the new. Any ideas how this is happening and
how to fix it, please?

 

[Domenic]

That's because the date system for your old worksheet is set to 1900
(the default for the Windows version of Excel), whereas the the date
system for your new worksheet is set to 1904 (the default for the Mac
version of Excel).

You can easily correct this by doing the following...

1) Enter 1462 in an empty cell and make sure it's selected/highlighted

2) Edit > Copy

3) Select your cell or range of cells containing your dates

4) Edit > Paste Special > Subtract > OK

Alternatively, you can change the date system to 1900 on your new
worksheet before copying your data...

Excel > Preferences > Calculation > and uncheck '1904 date system'

Note that if you open a file that uses the 1900 date system on your Mac,
the file will retain that date system.

Hope this helps!