Administration and Executive AssistantTier 240 minintermediate

How Excel Stores Dates

Understand serial numbers so dates work reliably across regions.

What you will learn

• Know that Excel stores dates as serial numbers
• Understand why 01/02 is ambiguous in South Africa
• Use DATE() function to be explicit
• Convert text dates to real dates with DATEVALUE

Excel skills

DATE(), DATEVALUE(), TODAY(), serial number system · Date Representation

The task

Eighteen start dates came out of the old HR system as plain text in DD/MM/YYYY format. They look completely normal in the column, but the moment anyone tries to sort by them, or calculate someone's length of service, the sheet falls apart.

You work in a real spreadsheet in your browser, and your answer is checked against hidden traps the moment you submit.

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