UK date format (Excel 2000)

[neil]

In the UK we mostly record dates in dd/mm/yy format, which places the day and month numbers the opposite way round to the American convention.

Amazingly Excel 2000 doesn't offer dd/mm/yy as a date format option!

I have, in the past, managed to add dd/mm/yy to the custom format options, so it is available to me every time I open a new workbook - albeit from the illogical 'Custom' list, as opposed to the 'Date' format menu which would be much more logical.

I am now trying to set up this format on 2 colleagues workstations, so that every time they open one of my workbooks, they aren't greeted with a cell full of stars in place of the date where ever I've set up a dd/mm/yy date format field - as their copy of Excel fails to recognise my dd/mm/yy and instead tries to display dd/mm/yyyy, which of course doesn't fit!

The problem is I can't for the life of me remember how I did it. I can easily see how to create dd/mm/yy by editing a default Custom format, but what I can't seem to do is make it so that format is always available to my colleagues every time they open Excel, just as it is for me.

Help!

Thanks in anticipation

Neil

[HansV]

If you have dd/mm/yy as Short Date format in the Regional Settings control panel, and your colleagues have dd/mm/yyyy, Excel will automatically convert the date format of cells formatted as dd/mm/yy.
Your colleagues only have to autofit the columns concerned to see the dates again. You could also make the columns wide enough to display the date in dd/mm/yyyy format yourself. I use Excel 2002 myself, and both a two-digit year and a four-digit year format are available in the Date category.

[neil]

Hans

No wonder I couldn't work out how to do it in Excel!

Control panel worked a treat, thanks.

Neil