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Paul B.85's avatar
Paul B.85
New member | Level 1
10 years ago

Cannot Change Excel online date format

Hi, I live in Australia and I need to change the date format in Excel to the proper format. It currently displays as mm/dd/yyyy. I've already checked the date format of my Dropbox account and it ...
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  • Karsten H.1's avatar
    Karsten H.1
    9 years ago

    @PAUL: You can change the Excel date display format but the Excel date input format is determined by the regional settings of the environment Excel is running in (Web/Windows/Mac/Mobile).

    If you want to display date cells correctly you can use the date detection in this sheet:
    https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4737890/RegionalSettings.xlsx

    and then use the formula "=TEXT([YourDateCellReference],C8)" to format date cells in Excel.

    With English (Australian) settings on Windows the formula "=TEXT(38000,C8)" shows "14/02/2004".

    The date format problem is one of the weaknesses of Excel. If you want to create internationalized worksheets that work in every country you have to detect the local regional settings and internationalize all formatting, input parsing and formula generating formulas.

Karsten H.1's avatar
Karsten H.1
Helpful | Level 5
9 years ago

I tested a some cases, here is what I found out:

Dropbox Web Preferences -> Language: Direct effect on Excel Online date format
Dropbox Web Preferences -> Date format: No effect on Excel Online date format
Chrome (Browser) Preferences -> No effect on Excel Online date format

Dropbox Display Language = German -> Excel date format = TT.MM.JJJJ (= DD.MM.YYYY)
Dropbox Display Language = Russian -> Excel date format = ДД.ММ.ГГГГ (= DD.MM.YYYY)
Dropbox Display Language = Chinese (Simpl.) -> Excel date format = YYYY/MM/DD
Dropbox Display Language = English (UK) -> Excel date format = MM/DD/YYYY
Dropbox Display Language = English (US) -> Excel date format = MM/DD/YYYY

This leads to the assumption that it is the Dropbox language setting that causes UK/AU/CA users to see wrong date formats. I also tested on SharePoint Online (Office 365) with the following results:

SharePoint Site Regional Setting = German -> Excel date format = TT.MM.JJJJ
SharePoint Site Regional Setting = Russian -> Excel date format = ДД.ММ.ГГГГ
SharePoint Site Regional Setting = Chinese (China) -> Excel date format = YYYY/MM/DD
SharePoint Site Regional Setting = English (UK) -> Excel date format = DD/MM/YYYY
SharePoint Site Regional Setting = English (US) -> Excel date format = MM/DD/YYYY
SharePoint Site Regional Setting = English (CA) -> Excel date format = YYYY/MM/DD

It seems that it is somehow possible to tell Excel Online the exact regional format.

Here is the Excelsheet I used for testing: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4737890/RegionalSettings.xlsx

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