Insert Excel Dates

Microsoft Excel incorporates a whole variety of different date functions. In order to utilise Excel’s date functions to the full, a thorough understanding is necessary of how dates are incorporated in Excel. The date functions enable Excel users to customise how dates appear and to perform calculations based on dates. There are far more one can do than just insert Excel dates.

An inserted date may be displayed in any of a number of different formats. For example, the 1st of April 2009 may be displayed as

1 April 2009
1-Apr-09
2009/04/01
2009/04/01 11:42

The formatting of each of the above differs, but the date value remains the same.

The format in which Excel will initially display dates will depend mostly on the Regional Settings of the user’s computer (Regional Settings are modified in the Windows Control Panel). Make sure that your computer’s Regional Settings, like the time zone, date and exact time, are set correctly, because Excel uses these Regional Settings as its basis for displaying dates. Dates may be formatted to almost any appearance using the Custom format settings, but a number of standard date options are available by default.

Every date that is entered is assigned a value by Excel. This value appears as a figure that seems unrelated to the date. The value of the date in the above example would be 39904.49. This date value is calculated from 1 January 1900, which has a value of 1. 1 April 2009 is 39 903 days after 1 January 1900. The time of day (11:42) is displayed as a fraction after the date value.

From the above it is obvious that to insert Excel dates has much interesting logic and potential uses behind it. In fact, this is just the starting point; there are many possible date calculations.