How To Change To Short Date In Excel

Working with dates in Excel might not be as simple as working with plain numbers and text, and the reason is that Excel's mode of storing and displaying dates is very different.

Moreover, Excel tin display the same date in multiple ways (or formats).

The good news though is that it is possible to convert between engagement formats quite hands.

In this tutorial we will show you three ways to apply the Short Date format to whatsoever engagement in Excel:

Using the Number Format bill of fare
Using the Format Cells dialog box
Using the TEXT function

What are Long Date and Short Date Formats?
Iii ways to Employ Brusque Engagement Format in Excel
- Method one: Using the Number Format Carte to Utilize Short Date Format in Excel
- Method 2: Using the Format Cells Dialog Box to Apply Short Date Format in Excel
- Method iii: Using the TEXT Function to Apply Short Engagement Format in Excel

What are Long Date and Short Engagement Formats?

One of the formats in which Excel displays dates is the Long engagement Format.

This format displays the day of the week along with the total calendar month name every bit shown below:

Notice the actual date in the formula bar is just one/1/2021.

However, since the cell is formatted to brandish the date in Long format, it shows the date in the cell as Friday, Jan 1, 2021.

The Long Date format might non be the nigh convenient form to display your date.

It's too long, so information technology ends upwards taking a lot of infinite and you would need to increase the column width to conform the full format.

Moreover, if yous see pound symbols "###" in a cell that contains a appointment, it is usually because the width of the prison cell is too narrow to display the total date.

This often happens when your cell contains the date in Long format.

A skilful way to reduce the cavalcade size or to handle "###" errors would be to use the Short Date format to the cells.

Iii ways to Use Brusque Appointment Format in Excel

Allow united states of america wait at three ways in which we can use the Short Appointment format to a given cell or range of cells in Excel.

We will apply each method to the prepare of dates shown below:

Notice that each date is displayed in a different format.

For example, the date in the showtime row is in Long Appointment format, while the one in the second row is displayed in the course of the serial number that represents the appointment.

We are going to utilise the Short Date format to all the above dates past the following three methods.

Method one: Using the Number Format Carte to Apply Short Date Format in Excel

The first method is actually the quickest fashion to utilise the Short Date format to a cell or range of cells.

All you need to practice is:

Select the cell or range of cells to which you want to utilise the Brusk Date format.
Click the Dwelling tab from the chief menu.
Click on the dropdown arrow in the "Number" group (shown in the prototype below):

Click home and then the date format drop down

In the dropdown menu that appears, you should see a number of number formatting options. Click on the 'Short Date' option.

Y'all should now have the Short Date format applied to all the selected cells equally shown beneath:

In case you don't see the cell content catechumen into the curt engagement format, a possible reason could be that the cell has text content (which is not something that Excel considers a date)

Method 2: Using the Format Cells Dialog Box to Apply Short Date Format in Excel

This method is a little more than versatile equally it likewise lets you customize your Curt date according to your requirement.

For example, you can fix the components of the date to be separated by hyphens (-), slashes (/) or dots (.).

Here are the steps that y'all demand to follow to utilize Short Date format using this method:

Select the cell or range of cells to which you lot want to apply the Short Date format
Right-click on your selection and select 'Format Cells' from the context menu that appears. Alternatively, you lot tin can employ the CTRL+i shortcut from your keyboard.

This will open up the Format Cells dialog box. Select the Number tab.

Make sure that the 'Date' option is selected from the list under 'Category'.

This will display a number of date formatting options on the right side of the dialog box.
Select the short engagement format that you want to apply to your dates. For a general Short Date format, you can only select the option shown below:

Click OK to close the Format Cells dialog box.

You should now have the Short Engagement format applied to your selected cells as shown below:

If yous need a more customized date format, then you tin type in the format that you want in the input box under 'Type', after selecting the 'Custom' option from the 'Category' list (instead of step four).

For instance, if you type the format "mm-dd-yy" then your date will be formatted to brandish 2-digit calendar month, day, and year numbers separated by hyphens, as shown below:

Your customized format needs to follow certain rules. For example, to correspond the month number without a leading zero, you can employ the "one thousand" lawmaking.

To display the month number with a leading zero, on the other mitt, you tin apply the "mm" lawmaking. Hither are some of the codes that you lot tin can utilize:

Code	Description	Example
1000	Month number without leading zero	1
mm	Month number with leading zero	01
d	Twenty-four hour period number without leading zero	five
dd	Day number with leading nothing	05
yy	Yr with concluding 2 digits just	21
yyyy	Total-yr with 4 digits	2021

You can combine the above codes to create your required curt-engagement format.

Hither are a few example date formats that are commonly used:

Format	Example
dd-mm-yy	13-01-21
mm/dd/yyyy	01/13/2021
mm-dd-yy	01-13-21
m.d.yy	1.13.21
m/dd/yy	1/13/21

Method 3: Using the TEXT Part to Utilize Curt Date Format in Excel

The kickoff two methods use the Short Appointment format to the original prison cell(s).

If, nevertheless, yous want to go along the original date(s) in the Long format as is and display the Short format in a divide cell, then you lot can use the TEXT part.

The TEXT function lets you lot convert dates to different text formats.

It takes a DATE value and lets you format it co-ordinate to a given format lawmaking.

The syntax for the TEXT part is:

= TEXT (date_input,                date_format_code)

In the in a higher place formula syntax:

date_input is the date value or a reference to a jail cell containing a date that you desire to utilize the Brusk Appointment format to.
date_format_code is the format code that specifies how you lot want the resulting date to await.

These format codes are the same as the codes discussed in Method 2.

The TEXT function applies this format code to the specified date_input and it returns a text string in the given format.

For example, the post-obit formula takes the engagement provided in jail cell A2 and returns the date "1/ane/21":

=TEXT(A2,"1000/d/yy")

Note: Always remember to enclose the format_code in quotes.

Insert this formula in cell B2 (of our sample dataset) and copy it down to the rest of the cells in column B.

Here's how the event that you should go:

TEXT formula to show date in mdyy format

The merely issue with the TEXT function is that the engagement that is returned is actually a string and not a Appointment value.

That is why you see the results aligned to the left side of the cells instead of the right. And so you cannot perform subsequent operations with the result (i.eastward., you can't utilize it in calculations that use date as the input).

The benefit of using the TEXT function to get the date in the short format is that you can add any text string before or subsequently the date.

For example, if you want to show the result as Appointment: 01/01/2021, yous can use the below formula:

                ="Engagement: "&TEXT(A2,"mm/dd/yy")

In the above formula, I have appended "Date: " before the TEXT function, which will brand sure that the result I get would accept the desired text before the date followed by the date in the specified format.

In this tutorial, we showed you three means in which yous can utilise the Short Date format in Excel.

The kickoff method is the quickest and the most ordinarily used. The second method is more than versatile every bit it lets you customize the short date to your required format.

The tertiary method is non used all that frequently, just y'all can utilize this method if you don't want to make changes directly to the original cells.

We tried to brand this tutorial simple and easy to follow.

We hope it was helpful.

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