The cells or workbook you selected in Excel 2000 will now display years in dates as four digits. If you or someone else uses an earlier version of Excel to view or modify the spreadsheet with the new formatting, the formats are saved and displayed properly. If you want to apply four-digit year formatting across all your Excel 2000 files, you must do so through the Control Panel. By changing the default date format in this manner, you set all past, present, and future workbooks to display the new format. Previous workbooks will adopt the new format as long as their dates haven t already been formatted through the Format menu.
Administrators can maintain control over the default date display as well.
In the Short date style list, click a format that uses four digits for the year. Preparing Excel 97 for the Year 2000 Previous versions of Excel do not provide all the date-handling flexibility that Excel 2000 offers. To address this issue, Microsoft has developed several useful date migration tools for you to download and add-in to Excel 97. These utilities are also available in the Office 2000 Resource Kit. They can help you prepare dates in Excel 97 workbooks for transitioning from earlier versions of Excel, or for auditing Excel 97 workbooks for the year 2000.