Converting European Dates to US Dates

Linda asked if there is a formula that will convert a date shown in the European fashion of day/month/year to the US version of month/date/year. Truth be told, this may not be necessary. You see, Excel maintains dates, internally, as numeric values and then simply displays them using various formats. If the dates are truly dates—numeric values—in the worksheet, then you can simply change the format and the dates will be displayed in the way common to the US.

Of course, the date you see in a worksheet could be a text value, instead of a date value. You can test whether the date is really an Excel date or a text value by changing the format of the cell (or cells) to General. (Do this using the Number tab of the Format Cells dialog box.) If it is text, you'll see no change in the display. If it is a date value, the date should change to a number that represents the number of days since whatever base date your system is using (typically January 1, 1900).

If your dates are truly date values, then simply change the format of the cell (or cells) to whatever date format you want to use. Again, this is done using the Number tab of the Format Cells dialog box.

If your dates are text values, then you will need to convert them to true date values (non-text) so that they can be formatted as just described. You can do this by using a formula to do the conversion. If you have a text date in cell A1 in the format dd/mm/yyyy, then you can use the following formula:

=DATE(VALUE(RIGHT(A1,4)), VALUE(MID(A1,4,2)), VALUE(LEFT(A1,2)))

The result of this formula is a date serial number that is recognized and can be formatted by Excel.

Of course, it is possible that you have a bunch of mixed dates in your worksheet. Consider the following list of dates:

1/1/08
2/1/08
3/1/08
4/1/08
5/1/08
6/1/08
7/1/08
8/1/08
9/1/08
10/1/08
11/1/08
12/1/08
13/1/08
14/1/08
15/1/08
16/1/08
17/1/08

If these are entered into a worksheet, the first twelve dates (1/1/08 through 12/1/08) are parsed by Excel as January 1, 2008, through December 1, 2008. The next five dates are parsed as text since Excel doesn't, by default, recognize that the dates are in d/m/y format. If you have a bunch of dates like this, you can quickly convert them to real dates without the use of any formulas. Just follow these steps:

1. Select all the cells containing the dates—both the date values and the text values.
2. Start the Text to Columns wizard. (In pre-Excel 2007, choose Text to Columns from the Data menu. In Excel 2007, select Text to Columns from the Data tab of the ribbon.) Word displays the first step of the Convert Text to Columns wizard. (Click here to see a related figure.)
3. Choose Fixed Width and click Next to proceed to step 2 of the wizard.
4. If you see any column break indicators in the dialog box, get rid of them by double-clicking on them. You don't want any such indicators because you don't want Excel to think you have static breaking places for your data.
5. When all the column break indictors are gone, click Next to proceed to step 3 of the wizard.
6. In the Column Data Format section of the dialog, click the Date radio button.
7. Using the date format drop-down list, choose DMY.
8. Click Finish.

That's it; your data is converted, in place, to the date values that Excel can work with.