Setting Short Date as my default

[TomH]

Hello.

I'd like to make the short date format of mm/dd/yy as my default. When I search on 'setting short date as default' all I find is setting the short date format default in Windows, which is not what I want. Currently, when I type a date the format comes up dd-MMM. I don't want to have to change it all the time to the format I want. Is it possible to do this? I cannot find it anywhere. THANKS!

 

[Rx_]

Basically its formatting:
Select the cell (or cells) you want to format.
Display the Home tab of the ribbon.
Click the small icon at the bottom-right corner of the Number group. Excel displays the Number tab of the Format Cells dialog box.
Click Date at the left side of the dialog box.
Using the Locale drop-down list, choose a country or region that uses the date format you want to use. In the case of Jerry's need, picking English (United Kingdom) is a good choice. Excel modifies the date formats available to you.
Select the desired date format.
Click on OK.

Another approach is to simply change the regional settings in Windows itself. You do this using the Control Panel options (look for Regional Settings in your Control Panel) and changing them to a country that uses the format you want. Excel bases its default date formatting options on which region you specify.

Finally, if you prefer you can create a cell formatting style that uses a data format of dd/mm/yyyy. If you create the style in a blank workbook, you can then save the workbook as a template and then use it to create new workbooks in the future. Since the new workbooks are based on the template, the cell formatting style would be available to apply to any cells in the workbook.

Since we only mess with templates a few times a year, it is easy to forget the steps.
Also, there is a little trick to assign the template the Default New Workbook.

Here is a good site with step-by-step:
http://www.excel-easy.com/examples/default-templates.html

 

[TomH]

Thanks for the reply. However, your first answer outlines exactly what I am trying to avoid doing. Your second answer only modifies what the short date looks like and does not set it as the default in Excel. Your third answer, if it works, only applies to workbooks I create and not all the ones I modify on a continuing basis. I would still have to go through the formatting process.

What I want is that when I select date as the format, Excel uses short date every time. For example, if I type 7/16 I want 7/16/15 not 16-Jul that I get now. Thanks again.