

Formats without an asterisk are not affected by operating system settings."

Date formats that begin with an asterisk (*) respond to changes in regional date and time settings that are specified for the operating system. " Date formats display date and time serial numbers as date values. The meaning of these two asterisk marks (*) at the left-side is that the date and time settings for these two formats with asterisk symbols (*) will automatically get updated as the regional settings for the date and time is updated/changed in the Windows Operating System.Įxplanation for the asterisk symbol (*) at date format setting is shown as below. See the asterisk marks (*) at the left-side for the first two date format entries in the above image. Right-click an Excel Cell and select "Format Cells" from the context menu, as shown below.Ĭlick "Date" from the "Number" tab, "Category" list, as shown below. This tutorial lesson explains what are these asterisk marks (*). When we try to format an Excel Cell as date or time, you can see format types with an asterisk mark (*) at the left-side.
