Excel and date format

Question

I'm having problems with the date Format in Excel.

The date format I'm using, "MM/YY", follows the link that's inserted into the Excel cell. When I insert the date as 12/24, it converts and appears as 12/25.

When I manually insert 12/01/2024, it works fine, but when I insert 12/24, it appears as 12/25. Below is a snapshot of cell M13; it's supposed to be 12/24 it's not, and I did type 12/24 into the cell. I tried the custom format.

Thanks for any help

Answer 1

Hi @Bill Seward,

Thank you for posting your question in the Microsoft Q&A forum.

Based on your sharing, the behavior you're experiencing is because that when you input 12/24, Excel will understand is as month/day (December 24 of the current year) based on your system’s regional settings, not as MM/YY. Therefore, when you apply a MM/YY format, Excel will show the month and year of that date which is 12/25 (December of 2025).

Unfortunately, there is no built-in global setting to make Excel ignore the system date & time regional settings and make it understand 12/24 as December of 2024. If you want to show the date as same as what you insert, you can type an apostrophe before the value as '12/24. This will display exactly 12/24 but it will be stored as text, not date value so you cannot use it for Excel calculations. If you want to use it for further calculations after, I highly suggest you enter the full date with year as you did try (as 12/01/2024) so Excel will clearly understand the year you want.

As community moderators, we kindly ask for your understanding that our access to internal development details is limited. While we may not have influence product design decisions, we’ll continue doing our best to support you within the scope of our responsibilities.

Thank you for your understanding and corporation. Should you have any further questions, please feel free to reach out.

Looking forward to your response.

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Answer 2

Thank You for the explaination