There are still many ways to convert the text to dates. If you are in a different country and your regional date format is dd/mm/yyyy or something different, then this technique will not work. The regional date format is set in the operating system (Windows or MacOS), NOT in Excel. and this is the same as the regional date format we use. In this example the date uses the following format: mm/dd/yyyy The Find and Replace technique will NOT work if your regional date format is different from the date format that the data is in. What If My Default Date Format is Different? Alt + i is the shortcut for Find All on the Find window, which is another one I use frequently. Here are the keyboard shortcuts to open the Find & Replace Window and Replace All.
(The keyboard shortcut for Replace All is Alt + A.)īy replacing these symbols, you are essentially forcing Excel to take a look at each of the cells you've selected, so that it can recognize their contents as dates. If your dates are formatted with dashes (-), then use dashes. If your dates are formatted with forward slashes (/), you are going to enter a forward slash into BOTH the Find what and Replace with fields. (The keyboard shortcut to bring up this window is Ctrl + H.) This brings up the Find and Replace window. On the Home tab of the Ribbon, click on the Find & Select menu and choose Replace…. When formatted as dates, you can see the month and year groupings like this: Use Find & Replace to Evaluate CellsĪ quick and easy way for Excel to evaluate these cells and to recognize them as dates is to use the Find & Replace feature. If the entries aren't being grouped by Excel into months and years, Excel is not recognizing them as dates. If the cells were in date format, they would look like this instead: Filter Drop-DownĪnother way to tell if a column of data is in text format is to look at the filter drop-down. When the data is text, you can see that the Number, Short Date, and Long Date options all look the same because Excel is not recognizing the data as a date.
If you go to the Number Format drop-down menu on the Home tab, you will see how the formatting would look for each of the categories in the drop-down. How to Tell If Your Dates Are Actually TextĪ couple of quick ways to tell if the data type for your cell is text or date include taking a look at either the number format drop-down menu or the filter drop-down menu. I'd like to show you a quick tip to quickly convert all of those text cells to dates. They may look like dates, but they their data type is actually text. You might find that when you export data from online and financial programs such as QuickBooks Online, cells that are formatted as a date don't transfer over with the same format. Expenses.xlsx Download Converting Text to Date Format
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