Excel - y2k

At work I’m using “Microsoft Office Professional 2019”.
Excel is “Version 2102 (Build 13801.20294 Click-to-Run)”
…also “Microsoft ® Excel ® 2019 MSO (16.0.13801.20240) 32-bit”

Today, I mis-typed “03/31/21” (which would automatically change to “03/31/2021”) as “03/31/31”. It automatically changed that to “03/31/1931”.

A little guessing and testing shows me that beginning at year “30” Excel defaults to “1930”. “29” and smaller is in the 21st century.

I haven’t researched this at all, but I somewhat doubt that they would “fix” this in later versions as it’s not necessarily an “error”. They had to draw the line somewhere and this is where it is. Please inform me if I’m wrong.

Be forewarned, however, 2030 will be here before you know it.

It’s been like that for a while (since inception?). Two-digit entries have to default to something. And, MS knows better than you what year you mean.

says someone on the internet:

That’s not Excel, that’s Windows. Go to your regional setting (Win+R and type ‘control international’), Additional settings, Date, and here you may change the range for two-digits year interpretation. By default it is between 1930 and 2029.

It’s a Windows setting, not Excel, as per this:

That’s not Excel, that’s Windows. Go to your regional setting (Win+R and type ‘control international’), Additional settings, Date, and here you may change the range for two-digits year interpretation. By default it is between 1930 and 2029.

My default is actually 1950 and 2049, as above

1 Like

Awesome. Thanks!

Interesting. I rarely use 2-digit years but frequently deal with data over a ~150 year period.

2 Likes