I HATE excel & dates

[kestrel]

I am getting very annoyed with excel changing all my dates into a different format.
I was happy to let it do it at first, but now I need the dates for =Lookup functions, and I am finding that they only work when they are formatted to general.

Problem is whenever I convert the dates into "general" formats I get the stupid serial numbers.
How can I convert at date such as 10/03/2005 (which appears: 10-Mar) into what I originally typed? As I really don't want to have to re-type everything again.

thanks
Leon

[Gary Brown]

You can format dates any way you like, but it will always store a date as a number, if you want to do lookups on a date enter the lookup as follws:-

lookup(date(YYYY.MM,DD),A:B)

This will then look for the date entered in the above formula in column A and return the value in B