Excel is normally used for serious business type work. It can, however, also be used for less serious, but equally important tasks such as finding out which day of the week you were born on.
On What Day Was I Born?
- Type your birth date using the short date format (such as 07/12/09) into a cell on a worksheet.
- Press the ENTER key on the keyboard.
- Click on the cell containing your birth date to make it the active cell.
- Click on the Home tab.
- Click on the down arrow beside the Number Format button on the ribbon to open the drop down menu.
- Click on Long Date in the menu to change the format of the active cell to the long date format which includes the day of the week.
- The cell containing your birth date should now include the day of the week on which you were born.
Points to Consider
- Make sure you know which date format is being used on your computer. This has to do with the order you type in the day, month, and year portions of the date. The month and day ordering can cause you problems. For example, 05/11/2009 can be read by your computer as the 11th of May or the 5th of November depending on the date format setting.
- The clock in Excel only goes back as far as January 1. 1900, so if you were born before this date unfortunately Excel won't be able to tell you what day you were born on.
- You can, however, get Excel to find on what day other notable events of the twentieth century occurred - such as on what day man first walked on the moon.
