Help - Date format appearing as text.

Question

Hi! been stuck with this problem for a day now. I have 2 sets of dates in the file. One already on my working file (column B) and the other from an external file (column C). I used a VLOOKUP to extract dates from an external file onto my working file. The formatting on the external file is fine., "Short Date". I am then using an IF statement in a separate column to bring in either a date from column B or C (whichever column has a date populated). When the IF statement is dragged down, I noticed that some date values are aligned to the left (similarly when a date is in text format) but when checking the formatting it says the column is in "short date" format. Also noticed that where there is an empty cell in column B and the if statement is picking up from column C - this formatting issue is occurring..

This formatting issue is getting in between another if statement I have and not allowing it to pick up properly.

Appreciate any help!

Answer 1

The format of a column does not determine the type of the data in it. If you have text in a column, you can apply any format you like to the column, and the content will still be text. If you change the format of column C, does the appearance of the cells change at all? I suspect not, in which case they are text and that would explain what you are describing. If the text dates are in a format that matches your regional settings, you could simply add +0 to the end of the reference to column C to convert them to real dates.