Working with Dates

Dates and times are actually numeric values that have been formatted to appear as dates and time. You can change the way Excel displays the date and time if you want.

The Date and Time categories are in the Category list on the Number tab in the Format Cells dialog box. You can use the Date format to display date and time serial numbers as date values with slashes or hyphens. The default Date format is the month and day separated by a slash, for example, 7/2 . To display only the time portion, use the Time format.

The Time format lets you display date and time serial numbers as time values with hours, minutes, seconds, AM, or PM. The default Time format is the hour and minutes separated by a colon , for example, 11:00 . You can perform calculations on the time values. To display only the date portion, use the Date format.

Understanding Date and Time Formats

Excel offers a wide variety of date and time formats, which are listed in Table 46.3.

Table 46.3. Excel's Date and Time Formats

Date/Time Format	Sample Date/Time
m/d	7/2
m/d/yy	7/2/04
mm/dd/yy	07/02/04
d-mmm	2-Jul
d-mmm-y	2-Jul-04
dd-mmm-y	02-Jul-04
mmm-yy	Jul-04
mmmm-yy	July-04
mmmm-d,yyyy	July 2, 2004
m/d/yy h:mm	7/2/04 7:30
m/d/yy hh:mm	7/2/04 19:30
hh:mm	13:35
h:mm AM/PM	1:35 PM
h:mm:ss AM/PM	1:35:50 AM