Excel Dates

You can use the custom format yyyymmdd for the column.

Note, this will only work if you have 'real' dates, eg not dates stored as text.

That works, however i need to double-click in each field to make it change?  Any trick to that?  I have 5000 records..

Thanks!

If you click the letter at the top of the column (A for example) then it will highlight the entire column and then right click in any cell of that column and change the format.

Tried that but it still makes me double click in each record.

Did you try pressing F9

Just did, i just found another problem with that.  Once the date is converted example:

19440521 i need to take the first 4 digits and combine it into a new field with two other columns like this

Moore         Robert       19440521

Create one column that looks like this:

MooreRobert1944  and the format returns this:

MooreRobert1621

Sorry for being a pain.....

Are you sure Excel is recognising these as 'real' dates?

Sounds like it might not be.

To test you could put this formula in column B and copy down.

=ISNUMBER(A1)

If it returns FALSE the 'dates' aren't being recognised.

To fix that here's a coupe of things you can try.

1 Select the column, goto Data>Text to Columns... and hit Finish.

2 Select an empty cell, copy it, select the 'dates' and goto PasteSpecial and select Add from the Operations section.

Once you've done either of these try the formatting again.

Could you attach a sample workbook?

It appears there's more going on here than just dealing with a column of dates.

Can you see my attachment?

I'll try it again...
ExpertsHelp.xlsx