Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Excel versions: 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. If you are using a later version (Excel 2007 or later), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for later versions of Excel, click here: Using Early Dates.

Using Early Dates

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated January 1, 2020)
This tip applies to Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003


2

There are three basic types of information that can be stored in a cell: numeric values, strings (text), and dates. In reality, dates are nothing more than numeric values, with the number being stored representing the number of days (and partial days for the time portion of a date) since January 1, 1900. This is a quick, handy way for Excel to store dates.

What happens, however, if you are doing genealogical or historical work and you need to keep track of dates that are earlier than 1/1/1900? There are essentially three ways you can approach this problem.

First, you can split up your dates. You could, for instance, include three columns for each date: one for day, one for month, and one for year. This, of course, will not allow you to change display formats for different date notations, but it will allow you to sort (using the column contents) as you desire, and to do rudimentary math on the dates. This approach to early dates can be the easiest to implement.

Another option is to use your own date notation for entering dates. For instance, if you wanted to enter the date for April 25, 1885, you could enter it as 18850425. This would be treated as a numeric value by Excel, which means you could do math based on the numbers. Because the notation has the year first, you could easily sort dates according to need. The only drawback to this method is that you cannot use Excel's date formatting, and you must get used to the notational syntax.

Finally, you can either create your own macros to work with out-of-range dates, or you can use a third-party solution. One such solution is found at the following site:

http://www.exceluser.com/formulas/earlydates.htm

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (2382) applies to Microsoft Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. You can find a version of this tip for the ribbon interface of Excel (Excel 2007 and later) here: Using Early Dates.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

MORE FROM ALLEN

Using Message Boxes

If your macro needs to communicate with a user, one simple way to do it is to use a message box. Here's how to use this ...

Discover More

Applying the All Caps Format

Want your text to always appear in upper-case, regardless of how you type it? Word allows you to add formatting to your ...

Discover More

The Line that Won't Go Away

Have you ever had a line appear on your document that you can't seem to get rid of? It could be due to a built-in ...

Discover More

Save Time and Supercharge Excel! Automate virtually any routine task and save yourself hours, days, maybe even weeks. Then, learn how to make Excel do things you thought were simply impossible! Mastering advanced Excel macros has never been easier. Check out Excel 2010 VBA and Macros today!

More ExcelTips (menu)

Quickly Entering Dates and Times

Excel provides keyboard shortcuts for a variety of purposes. This tip examines two such shortcuts, designed to allow ...

Discover More

Inserting Symbols

Using the Character Map to insert symbols in Excel.

Discover More

Entering Large Time Values

If you need to input humongous times into a worksheet, you may run into a problem if you need to enter times greater than ...

Discover More
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

View most recent newsletter.

Comments

If you would like to add an image to your comment (not an avatar, but an image to help in making the point of your comment), include the characters [{fig}] (all 7 characters, in the sequence shown) in your comment text. You’ll be prompted to upload your image when you submit the comment. Maximum image size is 6Mpixels. Images larger than 600px wide or 1000px tall will be reduced. Up to three images may be included in a comment. All images are subject to review. Commenting privileges may be curtailed if inappropriate images are posted.

What is six more than 2?

2020-11-10 13:24:46

Freddy E Mendez

HI Allen, thanks for the tip on working on early dates in Excel.
The second option mentioned YYYYMMDD works fine when sorting dates where the year is 0 or 1 (if you don't allow year 0, as in the Julian calendar). I tried adding a negative sign for years previous to 0, but sorting fails when in addition to the year information we have information of month and day, in this case the sorting interprets, for instance, January still being the "youngest" month rather than the oldest one (as in a date earlier than year 0 should be interpreted. One not very clean solution that works for me is using the following format for "negative" years: -YYYY.ssMMDD, where ss are two digits that allow me to order dates within a year (pretty much regardless month and day values).
For instance, -2300.900412 and -2300.800627 two events occured both in year -2300, one on April 12 and the second on Jun 27th will be correctly sorted because the ss digits 90 and 80.
Also by using for years the non decimal part, it allows to go back as far as I need (for instance if I want to include in my spreadsheets very ancient dates as in geological dates. Again, although this works fairly well, I was interested in looking for a more elegant but still practical solution for real ancient dates.
Thanks.
Freddy Mendez


2019-09-18 07:20:23

Kieran Gray

Hello - Can you please assist? I checked for the XDATE plugin / add-in, but can no longer find it. Do you have any suggestions? Thank you, Kieran


This Site

Got a version of Excel that uses the menu interface (Excel 97, Excel 2000, Excel 2002, or Excel 2003)? This site is for you! If you use a later version of Excel, visit our ExcelTips site focusing on the ribbon interface.

Newest Tips
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

(Your e-mail address is not shared with anyone, ever.)

View the most recent newsletter.