Excel uses a date system based on it's official start date of 01/01/1900. Days are whole numbers and decimals are time values, so, for example if you type 01/01/1900 12:00 into Excel and then go to Format it as 'General' you will see behind the date and time sits a value, which should be 1.5 (Day 1 and half a day in time).
Why all this nauseam? Well, today is 40,000. Having struggled with Excel through the 30,000's today feels like the first day of the rest of my life ;-)
Caveat: It isn't actually the 40,000 day since 01/01/1900 as Microsoft, to keep compatibility with Lotus 1-2-3 which was the leading spreadsheet of the day, duplicated the error that Lotus had that 1900 was a leap year and included 29th February. Of course it wasn't so I guess day 40,000 is actually tomorrow????
For loads of other great time and date stuff go to:
www.cpearson.com/excel/datetime.htm
Posted
Jul 06 2009, 07:27 AM
by
Nick Hodge