Text Formatting

I have text direct from a US system in a report, the text is a US date eg
01/30/2004. I would like to complete an aging report and need to find an
easy way to convert text 01/30/2004 to 30/01/2004 to allow excel to recognise
this as a date.
I have around 400 lines of data to convert so dont want to have to do this
manually.

can anyone help??
Thx
--
Suzanne Bond

Highlight the column
Click on <Format><Cells><Custom> and in 'Type' enter dd/mm/yyyy and click on
OK
Job done.

Regards.

Bill Ridgeway
Computer Solutions

"Suzanne Bond" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>I have text direct from a US system in a report, the text is a US date eg
> 01/30/2004. I would like to complete an aging report and need to find an
> easy way to convert text 01/30/2004 to 30/01/2004 to allow excel to
> recognise
> this as a date.
> I have around 400 lines of data to convert so dont want to have to do this
> manually.
>
> can anyone help??
> Thx
> --
> Suzanne Bond

If those dates are all in one column.

select that column
data|text to columns
choose mdy as the date format
and then format the column the way you want.

Be careful. Some of those dates may have been imported as dates:

06/07/2005 could mean June 7th or July 6th.

If you bring the data in from a text file, rename it to .txt (if it was .csv)
and then file|open.

You'll be prompted for each field. Chose the one that applies to the data--not
the way you want to see it.

Then change the format afterwards.



Suzanne Bond wrote:
>
> I have text direct from a US system in a report, the text is a US date eg
> 01/30/2004. I would like to complete an aging report and need to find an
> easy way to convert text 01/30/2004 to 30/01/2004 to allow excel to recognise
> this as a date.
> I have around 400 lines of data to convert so dont want to have to do this
> manually.
>
> can anyone help??
> Thx
> --
> Suzanne Bond

--

Dave Peterson