how can we keep the date format unchanged in excel.?

Question

how can we keep the date format of cell unchanged. so that the date format do not change on changing the date format from control panel for example the date format set on my computer is english(u.s) i.e mm/dd/yyyy now a date written in this format like 01/02/2003 becomes 02/01/2003 on changing the date format from control panel to English(u.k) but i want that the format of date in existing files should not change. this change should be only in the new files that i create

Answer 1

In an adjacent cell enter =TEXT(datecellref,"mm/dd/yyyy") Use this for display purposes only, use existing date for computations.

Answer 2

1- select the cell

2- go to home > number > choose text

3- write the date I.E 12/28/2010

Answer 3

format those cells as text