Day Count basis change

Hi,
I am a newbie and am operating Excel 2003.
As a practice session I am trying to calculate interest rate charge for a period. I noticed that the Basis (month/year basis) of the day count could be changed and hence I was quoted the following table:

0 or omitted US (NASD) 30/360
1 Actual/Actual
2 Actual/360
3 Actual/365
4 European 30/360

Since I am located in Europe I would like to change the current format to Basis 4 - European 30/360

How can this be done?
If this could be done would it affect the whole workbook or would one have to change and reformat each cell to take into account the above mentioned modification?

Any help will be greatly appreciated (even to other links were this problem has been tackled)

Thanking you in advance for your help.

Hi

You'll have to amend the formula in each cell I'm afraid. Depending on the exact formulas you are using, you may be able to use Find/Replace to do much of the replacement for you (which should be quicker than editing each and every cell).

Richard

Hi Richard,

Thanks for your reply. It is ok, I can live with that but the crux of the problem is actually getting the location from were to change the basis. Would it be built into the system, for example by changing Regional Settings (it is already set correctly) or would one have to add the Basis code mentioned above, i.e. #4 in this case, to each formula?
If in the affirmative do you have any link on how to formulate as such?

Again thanks ever so much.

Reuben

If it's an argument to the formula (which I assumed you were talking about) then you need to modify the formula.

Hi,
It seems that the formula is based on a timeframe period which can be modified. Infact the Excel help file provides a code system of the type of day count basis used (re above). The above mentioned are the code numbers. I have tried locating the code number so that I will change it to #4 (European 30/360).
It seems that currently Excel is calculating under #3 (Actual/365 days). Since we have now joined the Euro one has to start calculating interest on a 360days/year basis and not 365days/year basis. Hence the need to alter the basis of calculation to 360days/year.

With thanks

It's an argument to the function eg if using the DISC function the arguments are this:

DISC(settlement,maturity,pr,redemption,basis)

if you want to change to 30E/360 then the 4th (optional) argument needs to be input as 4 eg:

=DISC("18/9/2008","31/12/2010",120,100,4)

Thanks for the explanation.