How do I change the display language for dates in Excel?

This really should be easy but I can't figure it out for the life of me.

I work in a multilingual office and sometimes I need to make spreadsheets that have dates in them in Spanish and English. My version of Excel is setup for English, and that is how I generally use it. But now I want to take an existing spreadsheet and change the dates into Spanish. So instead of listing "1-Jan" it should say "1-Enero" or something equivalent.

I tried changing the language for every cell to Spanish, but that didn't do anything.

Any thoughts?

Thanks,
Justin

Control panel -> Date, Time, Language, and Regional Options -> Language and Regional Options

First of all, I'm on a Mac. Second of all, do you really have to change the language for your whole computer to change the language for a single spreadsheet?

You won't change language of computer (you need LIP for that).
You'll only change regional settings...

Sorry, don't know for MAC.

@martindwilson: I haven't tried that, and I guess that's a decent workaround. It just seems nutty to me that there isn't a "right" way of changing the language on my machine. I guess I'm just baffled that there is actually a "Language" toggle off of the tools menu, yet if I change the language to Spanish it continues to display the date in English.

There must be an equivalent of changing the computer settings through the Control Panel. I need to figure out what that is on a Mac. I tried changing the language in the International Settings and restarting Excel, but that didn't do anything.

You can define months on some sheet:

Please Login or Register  to view this content.

And then VLOOKUP names from table per will

Justin, did you ever get an easy solution for this? I am on an english speaking Mac, with english excel, but working on a spreadsheet that was generated in Italy, and it keeps putting dates in Italian. If anyone knows how to make them english with just the press of a button I would love to hear it.

@zbor: I like the idea and would do it for a sheet that was mine, but this will be used by the world so I really want to keep it absolutely simple.

Originally Posted by jmlberkeley

This really should be easy but I can't figure it out for the life of me.

I work in a multilingual office and sometimes I need to make spreadsheets that have dates in them in Spanish and English. My version of Excel is setup for English, and that is how I generally use it. But now I want to take an existing spreadsheet and change the dates into Spanish. So instead of listing "1-Jan" it should say "1-Enero" or something equivalent.

I tried changing the language for every cell to Spanish, but that didn't do anything.

Any thoughts?

Thanks,
Justin

When you highlight the dates you want to change to English, right click to "Format Cells", then go to Custom.
In the custom bar, type
[$-en-EN]mmm-yy
or
[$-en-EN]dd-mmm-yy
or however you prefer the date to appear but
[$-en-EN]
is the part that selects the language for you. Not sure what it is for Spanish.

I hope this helps

Originally Posted by FDibbins

Nick, thanks for the input, that is useful info to know

Just figured it out this morning :-)

Happy to help!