Dates entered in a cell

When we enter a date in a cell, Excel will convert it to the short date notation.
Dates are always right aligned.

If we want to change the format of the date, select the “Home” tab in the “Ribbon”, and click the downward pointing arrow next to “General”.

This opens a drop-down menu from which we select the “More number Formats …”.
In the “Format Cells” that appears, choose the “Numbers” tab.

On the left choose “Date”.

Select one of the number of preset date formats that appear on the right.
Click the OK button.

 

 

If you did not find the correct format, you can always do as below.
Select “Custom” at the bottom of the list on the left of the dialog.

And then in the “Type” box, type the format you want for the display of the date.
I’ll try to explain how Excel interprets this information.
You have d for day, m for month, and y for years.
If it is four letters then d displays the day in its entirety, eg Sunday.
If it is two letters then d displays the day as number, eg 01.
Four letters d, a space and two letters d (dddd dd), gives Sunday,01.

If it is four letters m, dislays the month as a full, eg February.
If it is two letters m, displays the month as number. eg 01
If it is three letters m, displays the month abbreviated, eg in Feb

And the same for year
If it is two letters y, it gives 09.
If it is four letters y, it gives 2009.

You can switch between different characters spaces, hyphens, slashes.

Auto-fill Dates

Instead of manually entering the date we use the fill handle at the bottom right of the cell, to fill the dates.

For example, type a date in cell A1 and click ENTER on your keyboard.
Select cell A1.
At the bottom right of the selected  cell you can see a black square. We call this the fill handle.
Click and drag it down. The dates are automatically filled in.

We can do even more.

When we click and drag with the right mouse button, and release it, a drop-down menu appears with different options.

Now select the option you want.

“Fill Days”: will change the days normally

“Fill Weekdays”: will only fill in weekdays. Saturday and Sunday will be ignored.

“Fill Months”: will change only the months. Day and year remain the same.

‘Fill Years”: will only change the years. Day and month remain the same.

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