One of the common problems many users encounter with Excel is incorrectly entering dates. People seem to get confused about entering dates. Should they enter dd/mm/yy or mm/dd/yy? Do they enter slashes, dashes, dots? And what was the date of the third Thursday in September last year anyway?
When a date is not entered in the correct format, Excel will not recognize it as a valid date. See Understand Date Values in Excel to learn how dates work in Excel. This often means you can not perform calculations with the 'so-called' dates. It also means any charts, Pivot tables, etc. based on the dates will not be valid.
What you really need is "Pop-up Excel Calendar", or a date picker running right within Microsoft Excel!
Pop-up Excel Calendar is an Excel COM add-in program that allows you to easily enter dates into Excel with a few mouse clicks.
For a quick example, click your mouse on a cell in which you must enter a date. An in-cell icon button appears. Click the icon button to display the calendar. Click the date you want to enter, and you are done!
If you like, you can even have the calendar display automatically as soon as a date-formatted cell is selected. For more information, please see displaying the calendar automatically.
In Excel 2013 and the above versions, by default, Pop-up Excel Calendar creates a separate tab calledPop-up Calendar in the Ribbon-based user interface. The tab contains five buttons, as detailed below.
- Calendar!
Displays the pop-up calendar manually. Generally, you don't need this button to display the pop-up calendar, as the in-cell icon button is shown automatically when you click a date cell.
- Settings
Displays the Settings window, in which you can control how the pop-up calendar works for you.
- Disable
Disables the pop-up calendar. If this button is pushed, the in-cell icon button won't be shown even if you click a cell that is formatted as date. Click the button again to enable the calendar.
- Help
Opens the help document.
- About Pop-up Excel Calendar
Desktop edition
Copyright and license information. You will need this button to enter your registration code or license key to unlock the program.
Microsoft Store edition
A link to the main app of Date Picker for Excel.
