US vs UK date and time formats

[Stephen Glynn]

Being in the UK, I obviously want to use the English(UK) date format, so
Christmas Day is 25/12/05 rather than 12/25/05. However, this defaults
the time format to hh/mm/ss (why, I do not know, since I can assure
American readers we're not normally that precise), so I have to reset it
English(US) to get hh/mm, which resets the default date format to
mm/dd/yy, so I have to change it back the next time I want to format a
cell as a date.

Any way round this? It's only a minor problem but it's irritating me.

Steve

[Jason Morin]

You can change the default date/time format (at least in
XP) under Start > Control Panel > Date, Time, Language,
and Regional Options.

HTH
Jason
Atlanta, GA

>-----Original Message-----
>Being in the UK, I obviously want to use the English(UK)
date format, so
>Christmas Day is 25/12/05 rather than 12/25/05.
However, this defaults
>the time format to hh/mm/ss (why, I do not know, since I
can assure
>American readers we're not normally that precise), so I
have to reset it
>English(US) to get hh/mm, which resets the default date
format to
>mm/dd/yy, so I have to change it back the next time I
want to format a
>cell as a date.
>
>Any way round this? It's only a minor problem but it's
irritating me.
>
>Steve
>.
>

[Stephen Glynn]

Jason Morin wrote:
> You can change the default date/time format (at least in
> XP) under Start > Control Panel > Date, Time, Language,
> and Regional Options.
>
> HTH
> Jason
> Atlanta, GA
>

Thanks, but that's not really the problem. Excel 2003 is taking its
default date/time option from the settings on the PC. However, because
someone at Microsoft seems to think that we in the UK express times as
hh/mm/ss rather than just hh/mm, if I need to format a cell as a time I
have to set Format>Cells>Time>Locale to 'English US'. This, however,
sets the Locale for my dates to 'English US', too, so when I want to
format a Date, I have to change my Locale back to 'English UK', thus
resetting my time format ....

What I really want to do is tell Excel 2003 that by default I want to
use a dd/mm/yy format for my dates and a hh/mm format for my times, just
as I could do in Excel 2000. Is it possible?

Steve