Excel modifies the date formats available to you.Īnother approach is to simply change the regional settings in Windows itself. In the case of Jerry's need, picking English (United Kingdom) is a good choice. Using the Locale drop-down list, choose a country or region that uses the date format you want to use.The Number tab of the Format Cells dialog box. Click Date at the left side of the dialog box.Excel displays the Number tab of the Format Cells dialog box. Click the small icon at the bottom-right corner of the Number group.Select the cell (or cells) you want to format.Follow these steps to do your formatting: Instead of using a custom format, you can simply change the format locale used for your dates by Excel. First, you can take a look at how you are formatting your dates. There are a couple of things you can do to approach this issue. Jerry wonders if there is some way to make his desired date format the standard. He can create a custom format for the date, but he must do that every time he enters a date in a new workbook. When Jerry enters a date in his worksheet, he prefers the format dd/mm/yyyy which does not appear as a standard format in the Format Cells dialog box.