

Here are a few notes on formatting numbers as dates: Below that, the Long Date format is showing the weekday name, and full month name for the date -Sunday, January 1, 1900.If you type the number 1 in an Excel worksheet cell, then point to the Short Date format on the Excel Ribbon, you can see that date in the formatting preview.Since Mac Excel 2011 it is in line with the Windows date.Up to and including Excel 2008, the date system started on January 1, 1904.The date system in Microsoft Excel for Windows starts on January 1, 1900.There are date system differences in some versions of Excel. If you format negative numbers as dates, the cells will be filled with number signs. Note: Only positive numbers can be formatted as valid dates. The imported dates are probably stored as a text value, instead of real numbers, and that is causing the formatting problem. In Excel, dates are stored as sequential serial numbers.

Why won’t the imported dates change format? Why won't they show a short date, without time included, in the cell's formatting?

Those dates stay in the same date/time format, no matter how you try to format cells that contain those dates.

