This user's frustration is entirely reasonable, and it exposes a flaw in how traditional spreadsheets handle something as basic as a date. The question is straightforward: why should anyone have to manually reformat every cell, every time, just to see dates as "X/X/X" instead of "X-X-X"? The answer, unfortunately, is that Excel makes you fight its regional defaults, and on a Mac, the workaround is even less intuitive. That is not a user error. It is a design limitation that wastes time and patience.
The core issue here is that legacy spreadsheet tools treat formatting as a cell-by-cell chore rather than a personal preference you set once and forget. The user is right to suspect that changing the system region might force the format, but that is a blunt instrument, it alters everything from currency to time notation, and it still doesn't guarantee consistency across workbooks. On a Mac, the path is even more hidden, buried in system preferences rather than the app itself. What this tells us is that the software assumes its defaults are good enough, and it punishes anyone who thinks differently. That is not empowering; it's gatekeeping.
A smarter approach would be to let users declare their preferred date format at the application level, not the cell level. Imagine opening a new workbook and having your dates automatically appear as "3/14/2025" because you told the tool once, three years ago, that that is how you work. No region changes, no format painter, no remembering which menu hides the custom format dialog. This is not a futuristic ask. It is a basic expectation of software that claims to adapt to human workflows. The technology to remember a user's choice has existed for decades. What's missing is the will to put the user's time ahead of the developer's convenience.
For anyone tired of this exact loop, the practical takeaway is simple: stop accepting that manual formatting is the only path. If your spreadsheet tool cannot remember your date preference after you set it, then the tool is the bottleneck, not your workflow. Explore alternatives that treat your habits as the starting point, not an afterthought. The goal is not to learn a new way to format cells. The goal is to never have to think about formatting cells again.