This article will explain to you how to change the default Date format by your custom display.
How is displayed a date in Excel?
By default, when you insert a date in a cell, the default delimiter between the day, the month and the year it's the slash. And this, even if you write your date with dashes.
Excel automatically replaces the dashes with slashes 🤔
Change the default Date format
If you want to customize the default display, you must change a Windows setting.
Step 1: Open the Regional setting
To open the Regional setting quickly, you write the command line intl.cpl in the Windows Search box
And there, you have the following dialog box with the default date format.
Step 2: Select another date format
When you press on the drop-down button, you display other date formats but the number of choices is limited 😕
Step 3: Change the default date format
To change the default date format, you must click on the button Additional Settings
Step 4: Create your custom date format
- Select the Date tab
- Change the custom date format (here dd-MM-yyyy)
The code of your custom date follow the standard rules of date format in Excel
And without restarting Excel, neither your computer, all the dates format in your worksheets has the dash for date delimiter 😉
Caution
When you change the setting of the date format of Windows, ALL THE DATES of your computer are impacted.
As you can see, after changing the default date format, the format of the date in the taskbar has changed too.
R Raghavendran
Abi
Rej
Rob
Lei
Kenton
03/02/2023 @ 15:12
Thank you very much. Solved an irritating problem.
26/07/2022 @ 12:05
This is what I wanted. This is exactly spot on. I got what I wanted, Thanks.
25/07/2022 @ 20:08
100% agree, need Excel default not Windows
30/05/2022 @ 17:37
I think this post misses the point entirely. This isn't changing the default setting in Excel. This is changing Windows. For example, if I enter the value 5/31 into Excel, it automatically converts it to 31-May. This is totally not useful. I know some people will argue that point, but they're wrong. And here's why. If I create the workbook in 2022, and then in 2025 someone opens this workbook and sees 31-May, they're going to perhaps assume that the date refers to May 31, 2025. This could lead to all kinds of issues. Yes, they COULD select the cell and change the format to mm/dd/yyyy to find out what the actual date is. But most people won't do that.
Sure, if I type 5/31/22, Excel formats it correctly (5/31/2022). But if I have hundreds of dates to enter and they are scattered in random columns and rows, then physically typing that extra "/22" cost time, creates repetitive motiion that is unnecessary, or requires selecting all those random locations and changing the format. All of this is avoided by allowing us to set a default date code. After all, Excel already has default date codes - we've discussed two of them already. But they need to go one step farther and let us actually have control over what date code forward to use. If I want to set a custom date code format of "yyyy-mmmm-dd hh:mm:ss" then I should be able to set that and not have to muck around setting individual cell formats or typing the entire thing out each time.
My Windows date format is correct for the region I'm in. What I need to know is how to set a default Date format in Excel that isn't mmm-dd. So the answer to "Change the default date format in excel" is not to change your windows settings. Most people already have the correct date format set for their installation of windows based on their region. After all, the date and time in my task bar always shows a complete date mm/dd/yyyy. So I'm betting that 90% of the people who are searching for this "change the default date format in excel" are not looking to change their windows settings.
Excel let's you set default fonts, set an office background to "tree rings," and select a "sound scheme" for feedback options. But something that might actually help with data integrity is nowhere to be found....
18/10/2022 @ 06:05
You got it 100% spot on
30/10/2022 @ 14:31
Rob, I have fought the exact same problem for months. All I want is to enter date in any and all spreadsheets and have them default to 01/02/2022, etc. without having to go to the format options every time I create a new worksheet.
Perhaps there is a way to do this in the registry, but one would assume that that is overkill.
Have you found a solution?
Kenton