How do I change my date format?

Excel uses the same date format as your computer’s system settings. You may want to change the format of the dates, though, to make it more accessible for users in other regions, or to make your data more compact.

Change the Date Format

To get started, open the Excel spreadsheet that contains the dates you want to reformat. Select the cells that hold each date by clicking and dragging your mouse over them.

Once selected, click the down arrow to the right of the text box in the Number group of the Home tab.

A drop-down menu will appear. There are two date format options to choose from in this menu: Short Date (1/17/2021) and Long Date (Sunday, January 17, 2021). You can select either of those or, if that’s not the format you’re looking for, click “More Number Formats” at the bottom of the menu. This opens the Format Cells window. You can also press Ctrl+1 (Command+1 on Mac) to open this window.

You’ll now be in the Date category of the Format Cells window. In the Type group, select the format you would like to use. If you prefer to choose a date format based on how a certain language and region formats dates, you can select an option from the Locale drop-down menu.

Click “OK” at the bottom of the window when you’ve selected the format you want to use. The dates in the previously selected cells will change to the new format.

RELATED: How to Add or Subtract Dates in Microsoft Excel

Create and Use Your Own Custom Date Format

There are plenty of different formats to choose from, but you can also make your own custom date format if you want. To do so, select the cells that contain the dates you want to format by clicking and dragging your cursor over them.

Next, press Ctrl+1 (Command+1 on Mac) to open the Format Cells window. You’ll automatically be in the Date category. Click “Custom” at the bottom of the Category list.

Next, you’ll notice a code in the Type text box.

You can edit this code to create your own custom format. Each letter or letters in the code represents a display type. Here’s what each letter or letters mean:

So if you were to enter m/d/yy in the Type box and then click “OK,” the dates in the selected cells would be formatted as:

Play around with the different code combinations to find the perfect format that works for your spreadsheet.

When changing the date format, consider who’s going to be looking at the spreadsheet. If your spreadsheet contains a large amount of data, and you want to look at the data over a period of time, you can sort the data by date, regardless of the format being used.

Windows 10 by default displays the date in the Taskbar formatted with forward slashes and two numbers for the year (12/28/16) and 12-hour format for time (12:00 PM), which is totally acceptable, but you can always change these settings if you want to see something different.

Perhaps you want to see dashes for the date (12-28-16) or dots (12.28.16). Or maybe for the time, you want to use a 24-hour format or something more unique, such as replacing "AM" with "Before Noon" (9:00 Before Noon) and "Afternoon" for "PM" (6:00 Afternoon).

Thankfully, Windows 10 is a flexible operating system that includes the necessary options to customize the date and time formats on your device to virtually anything you want.

In this Windows 10 guide, we'll walk you through the steps to customize the date and time formats on your PC.

How to change date and time formats on Windows 10

1. Open Settings.
2. Click on Time & language.
3. Click on Date & time.

1. Under format click the Change date and time formats link.
2. Use the Short name drop-down menu to select the date format you want to see in the Taskbar.
3. Use the Short time drop-down menu to select the time format you want to see in the Taskbar.

1. Close the Settings app to complete the task.

While you can change various date and time formats using the Settings app, you'll notice that you can't add custom formats. If you want to format the date and time with something more unique, you'll need to use Control Panel.

1. Open Control Panel.
2. Click on the Clock, Language, and Region link.
3. Click on the Change date, time, or numbers formats link.

1. Under the Formats tab, click on the Additional settings button.

1. Click on the Time tab.
2. Under "Time formats," you'll notice that now you can change various aspect of the time format.For example, you can edit Short time to change the AM and PM symbols for something like "Before Noon" (9:00 Before Noon) and "Afternoon" (3:00 Afternoon).

1. Click Apply.
2. Click on the Date tab.
3. Under "Date formats," you'll notice there is more flexibility to change the date format.For example, you can edit Short date to show date with dashes or dots (12.28.2016). However, unlike time, you have a limited number of valid formats you can use.

1. Click Apply.
2. Click OK.
3. Click Apply again.
4. Click OK on more time to complete the task.

Once you completed the steps, you should see the new formats immediately in the taskbar.

If you want to revert the changes, you can always use the same steps, but this time on step 5 click the Reset button.

It's important to note that the changes you make will not only alter the formats in the Taskbar, but also on apps that query the time and date from Windows, such as Office apps. This means that you may need to change the time and date formats in the apps themselves if you don't want them to use the same format showing in the Taskbar.

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