How to Change Date Formats in Microsoft Excel on Windows and MacOS

In this article, you will learn how to change date formats in Microsoft Excel on Windows and MacOS.

Microsoft Excel is a popular spreadsheet package that makes it easier to carry out calculation-related tasks. One downside of Microsoft Excel is that it uses the same date format as your computer’s system settings.

In this guide, you will learn how to change the date formats to make your data more compact.

How to Change Date Formats in Microsoft Excel

Follow the steps below to get started:

First, open the Excel spreadsheet that contains the dates you want to reformat.

Then, select the cells for each date by clicking and dragging your mouse over them.

Once they have been selected, click the down arrow to the right of the text box in the Numbers group of the Home tab.

A drop-down menu will appear. There are two date format options to choose from in this menu: short date (1/17/2021) and long date (Sunday, January 17, 2021).

You can decide to choose one of those or click “More Number Formats” at the bottom of the menu. (This opens the Format Cells window. You can also press Ctrl+1 on Windows or Command+1 on Mac to open this window.)

This will take you to the Date category of the Format Cells window. From here, in the Type group, select the format you would like to use.

Finally, click “OK” at the bottom of the window when you’ve selected the format you want to use, and the dates in the cells you selected earlier will change to the new format.

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