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US dates entered suddenly being interpreted as European dates
Our take
It sounds like you're experiencing a frustrating issue with date formatting in your spreadsheet. Despite having used the same worksheet for years, the sudden shift to interpreting dates as European formats is perplexing. Given that your Windows regional settings are correctly configured for the US, this unexpected behavior may stem from a recent update or a change in the application’s handling of date inputs. Let’s explore potential solutions to ensure your mileage calculations remain accurate and your data is displayed in the format you prefer.
I have a worksheet I use to calculate my volunteer mileage for tax purposes, copying it each year to a new version for the current year. I enter in the date in the first column (mm/dd/yy) and it displays in my desired format (mm-dd-yyyy). Worked great for years... until today. I cleared out the data and started entering in dates, and I noticed some of the dates were changing to the correct format and others were staying in the entered format. Upon further investigation, I realized the entered dates were being interpreted as European dates (dd/mm/yy). I changed the formatting for the column to mmm-dd-yyyy and saw this plainly.
I confirmed that the Windows regional attributes were correctly set for the US, including the date formats. (I've never touch this, but I wanted to be sure.) I went back and recopied the original worksheet to the new year's version, and I noticed all of the dates in both the old year's and new were now being shown in the dd-mm-yyyy format. When I entered in 1/6/25, and it displayed as Jun-01-2025. What the heck? I am baffled as to why this is suddenly happening for a worksheet that has been performing perfectly fine for several years.
Thoughts?
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