Date formatting

I have a cell which contains a date in the form dd.mm.yyyy e.g 27.01.2005, however it does seem to be formatted properly. I have a lot of this data, how can I get excel to recognise it as a date and allow me to alter the date format etc which I cannot do at the moment.

On Tue, 24 Jan 2006 04:24:43 -0600, Turnipboy
<[email protected]> wrote:

>
>I have a cell which contains a date in the form dd.mm.yyyy e.g
>27.01.2005, however it does seem to be formatted properly. I have a lot
>of this data, how can I get excel to recognise it as a date and allow me
>to alter the date format etc which I cannot do at the moment.

Assuming you cannot format it now, it is probably text.

First backup your data.

If your data is in column A, in an adjacent column, enter the formula:

=DATE(RIGHT(A1,4),MID(A1,4,2),LEFT(A1,2))

Copy/Drag down as far as needed.

Select this new column
Edit/Copy
Select A1
Edit/Paste Special Values


--ron

Thanks, it did the trick.

On Tue, 24 Jan 2006 07:13:29 -0600, Turnipboy
<[email protected]> wrote:

>
>Thanks, it did the trick.

Glad to help.
--ron