Willow Tips

Tip #2000-4: Formatting Dates Correctly with Live Data

Is it a date or isn't it?

In the worksheet below, we have pulled in Reuters Treasury data. The Maturity Date field appears to be a date, but is actually text. We know it's text because we cannot use Excel's Format Cells... command to change the date format.

Only true dates (represented by serial numbers), can be reformatted and used in subsequent calculations.