MS Excel: How To Apply Date Format In Excel

How Dates Are Stored in Excel (Quick Guide)

Dates are stored as Positive Integer in Excel. An example is given below:

• 1 = Sunday, 1 January 1900
• 2 = Monday, 2 January 1900
• 12345 = Wednesday, 18 October 1933

How to Apply a Standard Excel Date Format

Excel provides a very easy way to apply date formats with a single click. In the Home ribbon at the top, you will find an option of drop-down with text General. Click on this drop-down list and choose the required format of a date.

This is just a simple process to apply the date format using the Home ribbon’s drop-drop list option. Do as written below:

• Select a cell in the Excel worksheet, to apply the date format.
• Go to the Home ribbon and click on the Drop-down list option, as shown in the above image.
• In the list you will have many different kinds of formats, choose one format according to your requirement.
• When you clicked on the format present in the drop-down list, that format will be applied to the current selected cell.

Excel’s drop-down list contains only two formats of dates as shown in the below image. You can select one of the options to apply the format on the date in the cell. The date format depends on the version of Excel present on the computer or Laptop, so it may vary.

How To Access More Excel Date Formats

Excel contains many types of Date Formats that can be easily accessed by a dialogue box called Format Cells. Just need to select a cell that you want to format with the required date format.

• Select a cell in the Excel worksheet.
• Right click on cell and click on Format Cells
  or
• Use shortcut ctrl+1 to open Format Cells dialogue box.

Inside the Format Cells dialogue box:

• Select the Date category from the Category list at the left side of the dialogue box.
• Now, different types of date formats will be visible on the right side of the dialogue box. Click on the best-suited date format from the right.
• Click on the OK button to save the change and apply the format on the selected cell.

How to Define Your Own Custom Excel Date Format

Excel allows its users to define their own custom format of Date and can use in the Excel cells instead of using the pre-defined formats of Date.

This is simply a process to apply custom Date formats in Excel, not a typical procedure. As defined below:

• Select a cell in the Excel worksheet.
• Right click on cell and click on Format Cells
  
  or
• Use shortcut ctrl+1 to open Format Cells dialogue box.

Inside the Format Cells dialogue box:

• Select Custom category from the Category list at the left side of the dialogue box.
• Now, different types of date formats will be visible at the right side of the dialogue box and also a space to Type your custom date format. Click on the Type textbox and enter the custom date format.
• Click on the OK button to save the change and apply the user-defined format on the selected cell.

Characters that are used to define a custom date format in Excel

Excel Date Format Examples