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Problem with dates in Excel 2004 MAC [Solved/Closed]

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 Daisy -
Hello,

I'm working in MAC OSX
MS Office 2004 11.5.3 (081114)

I have two workbooks opened at the same time.
I copied 54K+ rows of data from one sheet from WBK-A into sheet in WBK-B.

Column C has date values (unformatted so they look like integers)

Both sheets contain a cell with value 39782.

When I format that cell in WBK-A as Date:MM/DD/YY it displays 11/30/08
When I format that cell in WBK-B as Date:MM/DD/YY it displays 12/01/12

This happens on many cells not just this one. It does not happen in the first few rows.

My head is about to explode but I know this is either a bug or the result of some
odd (hidden to me) inconsistency in settings between these workbooks or sheets.

Any help much appreciated.
thanks,
Sz
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5 replies

Answer 1 / 5
Posts
1
Registration date
Wednesday December 17, 2008
Status
Member
Last seen
December 18, 2008
 6
Found the answer.

There is a default setting in excel preferences to use 1904 date formatting.
Just uncheck that and dates are the same
.
Thank you
6
Thank you

A few words of thanks would be greatly appreciated. Add comment

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Answer 2 / 5
Posts
7080
Registration date
Saturday April 7, 2007
Status
Anonymous
Last seen
September 23, 2020
 498
Hi,
Thank you for coming back to give us the solution you have found. You can be sure that this will be helpful.
Best regards
Answer 3 / 5

Awesome! I was just on the verge of having exploded head syndrome, when I found your solution doing a Yahoo search.

Thanks!
Answer 4 / 5

For people that have the mac file only and don't have either a Mac or Excel for Mac.
I don't have one on hand so I had to save the file as CSV and then reopen it.
Make sure you chose the right date format - if you have hours/minutes/seconds you might lose them.
Answer 5 / 5

Hi,

Was just reading this post and thought I would add my 2c's. If you're struggling with this in excel chances are you will struggle with t all over the place.

In OS X Go to system preferences>date & time. Hit the format tab. Then click on international settings. Check out whether its US. Then if there is change it to your reigon. Fixed....across the board :)
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