2008/1/3, Drew Jensen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > > Troll/Idiot wrote: > > > > > > Johnny Rosenberg wrote: > >> 2007/12/18, Phyllis Corella <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > >>> I am having a problem with the date cell. When I enter 10-13-2007 it > >>> automatically puts in 13-10-2007. Now, since I am not in Europe I > >>> would > >>> like to be able to have the format that is used in the United States > >>> be the > >>> one that I want. I tried your help index, but I did not see it > >>> there. Can > >>> you walk me through it? thanks. > >>> > >>> Phyllis Corella > >>> > >> > >> Hm... what's wrong with the international ISO8601 date format? > >> 2007-10-13. > >> By the way, that's my birthday... > >> > >> J.R. > >> > > I prefer dates in that format or something similar (071013) since they > > make files sort in a convenient order, but some people seem to find > > them almost incomprehensible. It's like you're asking them to look > > for the morning sun in the west. > > > > Happy birthday. > > > Hello Phyllis, > > I would do two things. > > First, from your OpenOffice.org menu > > TOOLS > OPTIONS > Language Settings > Languages > For "Locale Setting" change this to 'English ( USA )' > Close the options dialog > > Next, inside your Calc file. Highlight the column, or group of cells > with dates. Right mouse click and select "Format Cells" > Select 'Date' under Categories. > In the text box "Format code" enter MM-DD-YYYY > Click on the green checkmark to the right of this, close the dialog. > > That should give you what you want, how you want it. > > Drew > > ps > > Happy Birthday from me too... > and > Come one guys these are Personal Computers not ISO > computers...*chuckling*..although I agree with the sorting comment, IF > you are treating the data as text, if it is actually treated as dates > then it makes no difference, the column sorts properly no matter what > display you choose, does it not? >
Well, everybody here seems to talk a lot about the importance of following the international standards, such as the IEC/ISO 26300:2006, but how many of you type date and time the ISO 8601 way (that is YYYY-MM-DD for date and HH:MM:SS for time, with a few variations)? Besides, the ISO 8601 looks very nice too. Unfortunately Swedish standards doesn't follow the ISO 8601 either; time is written as HH.MM.SS, very ugly indeed. And I hate slashes. 2008/01/03 looks really clumsy compared to the more elegant 2008-01-03. Or, to mention a quite different example, DOS vs Unix: Which looks more elegant? "DIR /P/O/W" or "ls -FilARs"? I know, they are not doing the same thing at all, it is only an example, nothing more... Well, I know, this is very personal and way out of topic, but that's what makes life so unpredictable, isn't it? Okay, maybe not... J.R.
