Dates in XIRR

[Howard Kaikow]

I was just looking at
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb224771.aspx, which states, in
reference to the XIRR function:

"Dates should be entered by using the DATE function, or as results of other
formulas or functions. For example, use DATE(2008,5,23) for the 23rd day of
May, 2008. Problems can occur if dates are entered as text."

Is this something new in Excel 2007?
I've never encountered such a problem with earlier versions of Excel

 

[joeu2004]

Is this something new in Excel 2007?

No. The Help page for Excel 2003 says the same thing.

If you enter, 4/27/2008 into a cell, normally that is not entered as
text per se. Instead, Excel interprets that as a date and enters its
"serial number" into the cel. You will see that if you format the
cell as Number.

If you enter the text `4/27/2008 (not the leading apostrophe), it
might look the same (depending on format options). But Excel does not
always treat it the same way -- although sometimes we get away with
it. One way to do this by accident is to enter 4/27/2008 into a cell
that was previously formatted as Text.

I don't know if the Excel 2007 is any more or less tolerant of dates
in text form than Excel 2003.


------ original posting ------

 

[joeu2004]

Errata (typo)....

If you enter the text `4/27/2008 (not the leading apostrophe)

Normally I don't bother posting corrections for my frequent typos
(sigh). But this one might stump someone who is unfamiliar with the
syntax. I meant to write "__note__ the leading apostrophe".

I'll let the other typos slide.