Mac Excel date scramble

[walentas]

Version: 2004
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Processor: Power PC

Hiya-

I don't know if this is a known bug, a mac-specific bug or just my own personal hell, but I've recently needed to track dates and have found that all of a sudden excel will change ALL of my fields with dates to something completely different, and even when I've locked the sheet!

What is even weirder is that if I go back to an older sheet and try and cut-n-paste the correct dates they get pasted in as the new/wrong dates.

Has anyone else stumbled across this or found a work-around?

Thanks,
tripp

 

[JE McGimpsey]

Version: 2004
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Processor: Power PC

Hiya-

I don't know if this is a known bug, a mac-specific bug or just my own
personal hell, but I've recently needed to track dates and have found that
all of a sudden excel will change ALL of my fields with dates to something
completely different, and even when I've locked the sheet!

What is even weirder is that if I go back to an older sheet and try and
cut-n-paste the correct dates they get pasted in as the new/wrong dates.

Has anyone else stumbled across this or found a work-around?

You don't give a lot to go on, but I suspect you're seeing a difference
between the 1900 and the 1904 date systems (depending on the status of
the Preferences/Calculation/1904 Date System checkbox).

The two date systems are 4 years and 1 day apart (the 1 day because the
1900 system includes a never-existed 29 Feb 1900).

All XL dates are just integer offsets from the base date (31 Dec 1899 or
1 January 1904). So to XL, today (19 Jan 2009) is just 38370 in the 1904
system, or 39832 in the 1900 system.



The date system is workbook specific, so if you copy from one system
into a workbook with the other system, you'll see the date shift forward
or back 4 years and 1 day.

You can either set both workbooks to the same system, or you can add or
subtract 1462 to dates to convert them.

Having said that, if that's NOT what you're talking about, please give
some clue more specific than "completely different" and "wrong".