The Date Migration Tools add-in program for Excel 97 and 2000 provides three wizards to help you prepare dates in Excel workbooks for the transition to the year 2000. Version 2.0 of the tools is designed to work on both U.S. and international versions of Excel. While using these tools does not assure Y2K compliance, they can be a valuable part of your year 2000 transition.

Note   The Date Migration Tools are not designed for use with the Thai and Vietnamese versions of Excel, and run only on systems where the primary calendar type is the Gregorian calendar (the Calendar type setting on the Date tab of the Regional Settings dialog box in Control Panel).

Dates in Microsoft Excel

The Date Migration Tools are designed to help you address issues with dates in Excel, including the following.

Ambiguous dates   By default, Excel 97 and 2000 interpret two-digit years from 00 to 29 as the years 2000 through 2029, and 30 through 99 as 1930 through 1999. Earlier versions of Excel use different rules of interpretation. The Date Migration Tools help you identify potentially ambiguous dates. In addition, the tools identify potential problems with date functions and with external data that might introduce date problems.

MMM-YY date entry   Dates typed as a month and two-digit year, like "Dec-98" won't be interpreted properly at the year 2001. Because 98 is too large to be a day of the month, Excel assumes it is a year. However, Excel assumes "Dec-01" is December 1 of the current year. For more information, see XL2000: Wrong Date Returned When You Enter Month and Digits in the Microsoft Knowledge Base. The Date Migration Tools help you find and correct dates that were entered in this ambiguous way.

Non-Gregorian dates   International versions of Excel support the Hijri calendar, the Hebrew calendar, the Japanese Imperial calendar, and other calendar systems. Because these calendars are not approaching the year 2000, users who work with international data should be aware of which calendar the dates are using. The tools run only on systems where the Gregorian calendar is the primary calendar. However, if you work with dates formatted in more than one calendar, the Date Migration Tools can help you identify dates formatted in secondary non-Gregorian calendars.

For more information about date and Y2K concerns for Excel users, type year 2000 in the Office Assistant or on the Answer Wizard tab in the Excel 2000 Help window, and then click Search.

Install Date Migration Tools

For information about system requirements and instructions to download and install the Date Migration Tools, see Date Migration Tools 2.0 for Excel 97/2000.

If you upgrade your system from Excel 97 to Excel 2000 after you install the Date Migration Tools, you must reload the add-in program manually. For more information, see Date Migration Tools 2.0 for Excel 97/2000.

For information about deploying Date Migration Tools 2.0 in a corporate environment, see Deploy Date Migration Tools 2.0.

How to audit and update a system

Once you've installed the Date Migration Tools, you'll want to audit your system to find and correct any date problems.

1. First, use the Date Migration Wizard to scan your system for any Excel files that may have problems with dates stored as text. In general, the author of a workbook can best decide whether to make changes manually or via the wizard.
2. Next, examine each of the files identified by the Date Migration Wizard, determine which files need fixing, and change text dates to use four-digit years.
3. Run the Date Fix Wizard to find any numeric dates interpreted as the wrong century.
4. Use the Date Fix Wizard to fix incorrect numeric dates, or fix these dates manually.
5. Maintain year 2000 readiness from then on by running the Date Watch Wizard.

How to use Date Migration Tools

After you install the tools, the Date Migration submenu will appear on the Excel Tools menu. The menu provides commands to run three wizards:

• The Date Migration Wizard scans your system for workbooks with dates that can cause problems when you upgrade to Excel 97 or Excel 2000 from an earlier version.
• The Date Fix Wizard corrects problems with dates and date formats.
• The Date Watch Wizard monitors your work and alerts you if you enter ambiguous dates or open files that contain dates with two-digit years.

The tools have the following limitations:

• They cannot be used when Excel 4 (XLM) macros are running, or on workbooks containing XLM macros.
• They cannot be used on Visual Basic® for Applications (VBA) modules.
• They cannot be used on a workbook when it is embedded in another program, such as Microsoft Word or Microsoft Outlook®.
• They cannot detect or correct encoded dates (numbers like 990204 or strings like 1999mar12).
• They cannot determine whether formulas use worksheet functions correctly, although they can detect dates that are potential problems within formulas.