There is a spreadsheet I use at work where we are told to use an apostrophe before the date to prevent the function bar from converting the dd/mm/yy to dd/mm/yyyy. Why does the apostrophe do this?
There is a spreadsheet I use at work where we are told to use an apostrophe before the date to prevent the function bar from converting the dd/mm/yy to dd/mm/yyyy. Why does the apostrophe do this?
hi Oleschool, welcome to the forum. please do not do that, unless you have no use for the dates. the apostrophe makes it a text. like if you put
'012
it will appear as it is. but if you plainly put it as
012
it will appear as 12. Dates are actually stored as numbers in Excel & are very useful when you use formulas with it. as a text, it'll be much harder. it takes 1 more extra step, but type it as you normally do & custom format cells to "dd/mm/yy". my preference though, is to write as
1Feb12
it's hard to know if 1/2/2012 is 1st Feb 2012 or 2nd Jan 2012
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So the apostrophe turns the numbers to text.Is this right? I've been trying to format the cells properly but my spreadsheets get sent back to me because I haven't inserted the apostrophe.Its frustrating to say the least.
yes, that is correct. the cell no longer has a value (date) in it, it has text in it, and as such, cannot be used as-is in formulas (not a good thing)
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Ford
Thank you.How do I set this post as resolved?
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