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Converting Text Dates to Dates in Excel 2007:-

If your cells contain text that looks like dates, the date-based axis will not work. In the Figure (given below), the data came from a legacy computer system. Each date was imported as text instead of as dates.



(These dates are really text, as indicated by the apostrophe before the date in the formula bar.)

This is a frustrating problem because text dates look exactly like real dates. You may not notice that they are text dates until you see that changing the axis to a date-based axis has no effect on the axis spacing.

If you select a cell that looks like a date cell, look in the formula bar, and see an apostrophe before the date, you know you have text dates (refer to the above Figure). This is Excel’s arcane code to indicate that a date or number should be stored as text instead of a number.