Brother Ensemble PDP-100J, Owner'S Manual

Page: 161 / 440

Spreadsheet 147
Entering and Changing Dates
There are two ways to enter dates in your spreadsheet. You can enter
them as labels, or you can enter them as formulas.
"
To enter a date as a label:
Enter the date just as you would any other label. Type the date exactly
as you want it to appear. For example, you could type any of the
following:
S
Jan 15, 1996
S
January 15, 1996
S
1/15/96
S
96-01-15
Entering dates as formulas
You can also enter a date as a formula, using a special date function.
When you do this, Spreadsheet stores the date as a serial number
representing the number of days since January 1, 1900. For example,
January 1, 1993 would be stored as the number 33969.
When a date is stored as a serial number, you can use Spreadsheet to
change its format automatically, and you can use the date in formulas. For
example, you can change Jan 15, 1993 to 1/15/93 without retyping. And
you can subtract" May 3, 1990 from June 15, 1991 to determine the
number of days between the two dates (408). To take advantage of these
features, you first enter your date as a formula using the built-in DATE
function.
"
To enter a date as a formula:
1. Select the cell in which you want to enter a date.
2. Type =DATE. The characters appear in the Edit Area.
3. Type an open parenthesis, followed by numbers representing the year,
month, and day of the date you want to enter. Then, type a close
parenthesis. Be sure to type the year, month, and day in that order. For
example, the entire entry for February 17, 1993 is as follows:
=DATE(1993,2,17)
4. Click on the Enter button or press
ENTER
. Theserialnumberforthedate
appearsinthecell.Forexample,ifyouspecifyFebruary 17, 1993,34016
appears.
You can also enter time
values (hours, minutes, and
seconds) using a similar
technique. Instead of the
DATE function, you use the
TIME function; instead of
entering the year, month and
day, you enter the hours,
minutes, and seconds.
Unless you want the date to
appear in your spreadsheet as
a serial number, you will
probably want to change the
date format. The next section
explains how to do this.