Formatting dates:
In Excel, we have many different options in order to format a date.
At the request of several students, I will explain how you can choose the correct format in this tip.

For clarity, to change the format of a date, we click the “Numbers” tab in the “Format Cells” dialog box.
To open this dialog box, right-click the cell with the content (1) and select “Format Cells” from the pop-up menu.
Or just click the arrow pointing downwards for the number format of the “Ribbon” (2), and then select “More Number Formats …” at the bottom of the pop-up menu.
In both cases, this opens the “Format Cells” (A) dialog box in which the “Date” (B) category is selected.
In this window, we have a list of types to format our date (C).
A preview of the type selected in the list is seen at the top of the window (D).

For a customized type, select the “Custom” (1) category.
The type of date is determined in the space provided (2).

In this textbox you have a lot of options to determine the layout of the date.
I’ll sum them up.
d: Displays the day as number.

ddd: returns the first letters of the day.

dddd: returns the full name of the day.

The same thing goes for months.
m: Displays the month as a number.

mmm: indicates the month as an abbreviation.

mmmm: Specifies the name of the month.

Between the day and the month, you can place a comma with a space or a dash, or whatever you want. Otherwise, you can place everything together.

The same thing goes for the years.
yy: indicates the last two digits of the year

yyyy or yyyy: displays the year in full.
Every time you change the syntax in the box, you can see a preview at the top.

Possibilities abound.

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