Why Excel Does Not Convert Two-Digit Year to Four-Digit Automatically in Some Cases?

Have you ever meet with problems that Excel cannot identify the two-digit year you input into cells? In this article, we will explore the reason behind this phenomenon.

The date in Excel is a very ordinary element that you will use. And to make things easier, you can enter the two-digit year into cells. For example, if you input “10-25-16” into a cell, it will automatically change into “10/25/2016”. If you input the four-digit year date “10-25-2016” into a cell, you will get the same result. Therefore, you can save time by only inputting the two-digit year.

An Example of the Date Problem

The feature of Excel is very convenient. However, problems will exist if you use someone else’s computer. If you input the “10-25-16” into the cell, it will not change into date automatically. On the contrary, it will remain the “10-25-16” in the cell. And the cell category will still be “General” instead of “Date”.

Besides, even if you enter “10-25-2016”, the cell is still in “General”.

Find Out the Reason of the Phenomenon

This is a rather strange event, but the reason is actually very simple. You are using someone else’s computer. The reason is that the date format of the computer is different from yours. You can check the date format of the computer at the right-bottom corner of the computer.

The date format of this computer is “yyyy-MM-dd”, which is different from yours. So if you input with the format of “M/d/yyyy” or “M/d/yy”, Excel cannot identify it correctly. Hence, you need to input the date according to the date format in the current computer. You can input “16-10-25” into a cell, and it will change into “2015-10-25” automatically. And the cell category will also change into “Date”.

Change Date Format

If you are not accustomed to the date format, you can also change according to your need.

1. Click “Start” of the computer.
2. And then click “Control Panel”.
3. Click “Clock, Language, and Region” in the window.
4. Next click “Region and Language”.
5. In the “Region and Language” window, change the date format of the “Short date”.
6. After that, click “OK”. Now, you can input the date according to your habit.

You may also notice that if you change the date in the system, the format of the existing date in the excel will also change accordingly. And after you finish all the editing, don’t forget to change the format back. Otherwise it will cause the same trouble to other people.

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Author Introduction:

Anna Ma is a data recovery expert in DataNumen, Inc., which is the world leader in data recovery technologies, including word recovery and outlook repair software products. For more information visit www.datanumen.com