How do I use a default Non-US date format

[gin girl]

HI
I have just bought my first mac after using PCs. I would like to be
able to use Excel like I did on my PC.

I'm in NZ and want to open an excel sheet and be able to enter the date
format as dd/mm/yy, but the only date formats in
Format/cell/number/date are mm/dd formats. I have created a custom
format of dd/mm/yy but if i enter 12/3/05 (12mar05) it changes to
3/12/05 and the cell isn't displaying what the formula line displays,
the days and months are reversed.

I don't know if this is making sense to anyone but it is driving me
bonkers! I'm having problems seeing why microsoft would make things on
a mac run differently to on a PC, and find it hard to believe that
there is no way round this.

My international settings are set to NZ and in Windows this is enuf to
change the default for all excel sheets that you open.

Can anyone give me some advice on how to get round this, do i need to
download an update?

I'm running Excel 2004 for mac, version 11.0 (040329) on a ibook G4- OS
..

 

[Neill Massello]

I'm in NZ and want to open an excel sheet and be able to enter the date
format as dd/mm/yy, but the only date formats in
Format/cell/number/date are mm/dd formats. I have created a custom
format of dd/mm/yy but if i enter 12/3/05 (12mar05) it changes to
3/12/05 and the cell isn't displaying what the formula line displays,
the days and months are reversed.

Excel can figure out most date formats that contain words and four-digit
years, but it can't do so with your "xx/xx/xx" strings and assumes they
are in the system-wide format. The formatting dialog changes how a date
is *displayed* in a cell; but if you *enter* a date in short format, you
must type it in using the format specified in the International
preference pane.