Construct Date Text For Free

The international standard recommends writing the date as year, then month, then the day: YYYY-MM-DD.

The United States is one of the few countries that use mm-dd-yyyy as their date formatwhich is very very unique! The day is written first and the year last in most countries (dd-mm-yyyy) and some nations, such as Iran, Korea, and China, write the year first and the day last (yyyy-mm-dd).

Allow dates to be displayed with a DD MMM YYYY format. For example, , . Because dates are seen in DD/MM and MM/DD formats in different places, not just in this service, allowing abbreviations for months clears up the confusion.

Here's one way to fix your problem: Type 0 into a cell and copy it. You may also copy a blank cell. Select all the dates in your range.With your dates still selected, press Ctrl + F1 (assuming you're on Windows) and then change the Number format to mm/dd/yyyy , dd/mm/yyyy or whichever you prefer.

The ISO 8601 format YYYY-MM-DD (2022-09-27) is intended to harmonize these formats and ensure accuracy in all situations. Many countries have adopted it as their sole official date format, though even in these areas writers may adopt abbreviated formats that are no longer recommended.

If you need to convert dates to text (i.e. date to string conversion) , you can use the TEXT function. The TEXT function can use patterns like "dd/mm/yyyy", "yyyy-mm-dd", etc. to convert a valid date to a text value.

The easiest way to do this is to start from a format this is close to what you want. Select the cells you want to format. Press CTRL+1. In the Format Cells box, click the Number tab. In the Category list, click Date, and then choose a date format you want in Type.Go back to the Category list, and choose Custom.