Format the date

Last update: 2024-10-17
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IMPORTANT

A new and streamlined Report Builder was released on October 16, 2024. It is supported on Mac, Windows, and web browsers.
This Legacy Report Builder add-in version still works. You can convert your legacy workbooks to the new Report Builder.

In addition to the standard cell formatting choices available through Excel’s Format > Cells (Ctrl+1) feature, you can apply limited formatting to cell ranges with Report Builder. These formatting choices depend on the metric you have chosen.

After you add dimensions to the Row Labels grid, click Format.

In the Format menu, click Custom Format to apply customized formats for dates similar to the prepend and postpend feature. For example, you can enter text that always occurs after the date (such as A.D. B.C.E. A.H. etc.). You can add text before the date, such as Start Date and Start and End Date. In addition, you can construct a custom date expression from day, month, and year abbreviations, and use a custom separator between parts of the date. All date formats must consist of three abbreviations only enclosed in brackets.

The following table describes how you can use date abbreviations in the Custom Format field:

Abbreviation Meaning Example using Wednesday, March 14, 2012
MM/dd/yyy Full numeric date 03/14/2012
M Number of month 3
MM Number of month with 0 padding for months < 10 03
MMM Short name of month Mar
MMMM Long name of month March
D Long name of the date Wednesday, March 14, 2012
d Number of day 14
dd Number of day with 0 padding for days < 10 01 - 09
ddd Short name of day Wed
dddd Long name of day Wednesday
yy 2-digit year 10
yyyy Full 4-digit year 2012

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