slash marks in dates

[childothe1980s]

Hello:

I have formatted dates in a column to be mmddyyyy through right-clicking and
choosing a Custom format.

Some of the dates have slash marks, some of them don't.

How do I get the slash marks out of there?

Thanks!

childofthe1980s

 

[Dave Peterson]

If you see the dates after you've applied that custom format, then the values
aren't really dates--they're strings just masquerading as numbers (dates).

If the dates look like your windows short dates (same order of mdy or dmy or ymd
or whatever), you could select those offending cells and do

Edit|replace
what: /
with: /
replace all.

Excel will reevaluate each of the cells that changed and notice that they're
dates.

(If the order doesn't match mdy vs dmy, make sure you use the control panel to
change that setting first. I'd close excel
change that windows setting
reopen excel (and the workbook)
do the change (and verify)

Save and close that workbook
change the windows setting back
and reopen excel and that workbook.

 

[Biff]

Hi!

My guess is the dates with the slashes are not true Excel dates, they might
be TEXT entries that look like dates.

Try testing one of those dates. Assume A1 is a questionable entry:

=ISNUMBER(A1)

If the entry is a true Excel date the formula will return TRUE.

How many of these do you have? 100's? 1000's?

Biff