Regardless of how you type a date, Calc always represents it in the default Short date format of all numbers (Canadian dates always displays as Year-Month-Day). If you are more comfortable with the USA date format of Month/Day/Year then change the Local Setting to English (USA). Since most Canadians don't write out a date using the strict format, its best when writing a date to type out the month, that way there is no confusing between user and Calc. Calc version 3 uses the strict Canadian date format to represent the Canadian date. In this example the date format used will be the Canadian date format because the local settings is set for English Canada.

This panel is part of the larger Options panel: TOOLS -> OPTIONS ->LANGUAGE SETTINGS -> LANUGUAGE -> LOCAL SETTINGS. The date format uses the Language Settings Panel to determine which format to use. Therefore when using all numbers to represent the date instead of typing the month out as text, its important to know what is the default date format that Calc is using. MS Excel uses the general Canadian date format. Calc version 3 uses the strict Canadian Date format (Government) of Year/Month/Day and but there is also a general Canadian Date format of Day/Month/Year that earlier versions used.

Canada: Year/Month/Day - 4/5/11 would be converted to and read as May 11, 2004.

USA: Month/Day/Year - 4/5/11 would be read as April 5, 2011.Many people aren't aware Americans and Canadians use different date formats: Calculating Dates Date Formats Language Settingsīefore you can properly use dates in calculations, you need to know what whether Calc is using the USA or Canadian date Format.

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