When you add a date, it uses a predefined format. Even though you need a format like 02/08/2021, Excel Online and Google Sheets may use something else, like 08-02-2021.

You can set up conditional formatting in Excel for dates. We have included detailed examples you can try while reading the guide.

It's easy to change the date format in Microsoft Excel. You just need to use the "Date" drop-down menu, which gives you plenty of options.

Now, let’s set a conditional formatting rule that highlights due dates that match the current date, which in this case is Feb. 13, 2021: Select the data. In this case, that’s C4:C8.

Select the time format you want to use in the "Type" box. For example, click "1:30:55 PM" to format the text as H:MM:SS -- where H represents hours, M represents minutes and S represents seconds.

How to Auto-Format the Date in MS Excel. When you create Microsoft Excel spreadsheets that contain one or more columns of dates, you can make things a bit easier if you pre-format your cells to ...

With the use of Excel’s conditional formatting, you can set the rules once and let Excel do the highlighting for you.

If you have to work with a date stamp in Microsoft Excel that includes date and time, you can use these simple expressions to extract both components, making them easier to work with.

If a 1-3, 5:10.3 or any other number or time that qualifies is within the data I’m copying from a web page, I’ll get a date and time for them, even if I format cells as text beforehand.