[libreoffice-users] Re: How to enter Dates in a format to allow the counting of days lapsed between a "from a date" cell and a "to a date' cell

Am 24.01.2012 15:17, Tom Davies wrote:
> Hi :)
> I think for data-entry it is best to enter the date as
> 01/24/2012

If you want to enter dates of the current month (January 2012 at the 
time of this writing) then you simply enter
1/
13/
4/
30/
15/

This will enter the *correct cell values* _unless_ the cells had been 
formatted as text *before* entry.
If there are some February dates:
1/2
3/2
28/2
except for the US locale where you type
2/1
3/2
2/28
Of course you can enter full dates with long or short month name, but why?

How exactly the correct cell values look like depends firstly on the 
locale setting, secondly on the number format.
Once you entered the correct cell values, there are literally thousands 
of ways to change the appearance of these values (dozends of predefined 
formats for each locale plus user-defined formats).
Once you entered the correct cell values, no formatting attribute will 
ever change your value, not even number format "Text" (which many users 
believe to be a magic conversion feature).

> I'm in England so it feels a tad weird to type the day and month 'the wrong way around', lol.  I 
> think it picks-up on whatever your global localisation is set at.  Mine is set to UK so i type 
> dd/mm/yyyy.
> Regards from

This global setting applies to all types of table cells (Writer, Calc, 
Base), Writer fields, Calc cell styles, form controls (Base), numeric 
chart axes and may be more. All of these elements have a cell format 
dialog where you can override the locale for the current element.
You can change it for the current Calc document by changing the locale 
of the default cell style which propagates to all subsequent styles 
which do not have an explicit locale setting.


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