I downloaded some data from my bank for some transactions.  Using MS Excel 2008 V 12.2 on a Imac 2015  I usually convert the dates to YYYY-MM-DD (System International Standard) so there is absolutely no confusion ever (as what 11-02-04 would mean), as with other formats, at any time in the future.  However, when I convert the data in the cell to YYYY-MM-DD using format, half the dates never convert. They remain 26/07/2015. The strange thing is there is no real consistency, some entries convert, some don't. It seems strange if an engineer would program their dates to different formats. I've tried everything, including manually deleting the entire contents of the cell, and replacing it with 2015-07-26, then it converts to July 7, 2015. I've researched this with no luck on the web, even looking at some answers in this forum. Would appreciate any help. I can try to post the sample excel here or a screen shot if possible.   26/04/2015  27/04/2015 29/04/2015  30/04/2015  2015-04-06  2015-05-06 14/06/2015  15/06/2015  26/07/2015  27/07/2015 26/07/2015  27/07/2015 26/07/2015  27/07/2015 28/07/2015  29/07/2015 28/07/2015  29/07/2015 2015-08-08  2015-10-08 2015-08-08  2015-10-08 2015-08-08  2015-10-08 20/08/2015  21/08/2015 20/08/2015  21/08/2015 23/08/2015  24/08/2015 23/08/2015  24/08/2015   Note that in August, only one date reformatted properly. Also in April.   Am not a techie, so would a appreciate simple step by step instructions on how to fix if you can help. Also a layman's terms to explain why this is happening would be great. it seems really mindboggling to me how/why/if an software engineer? would change date formats in mid month or whatever, and also why the date won't change properly even with complete deletion and manual input.  My other question, out of interest, is that I assume hundreds of brilliant engineers design Excel. And in decades of existence, how come the International SI standard of YYYY-MM-DD, the first format I would include on day one, is NOT even an option in the drop down field?   Thanks in advance for your kind assistance,  Stu
I constantly have problems working with dates in Excel, I must be doing something wrong but I don't understand what.  I have a spreadsheet, exported from our exchange server, that contains a column with dates on. They have come out in US format even though I'm in the UK.   The column in question looks like this  04/08/2012 04/09/2009 04/01/2010 04/21/2011 04/05/2012 08/30/2009 08/29/2010 08/28/2011   In Excel, I have highlighted the column and selected Format Cells.... In this dialog box, I have selected the Date, selected English (United States) as the locale and chosen the matching date format from the list. I hit OK and try to sort the data by this column.   In the sort dialogue I choose this column, select sort on Values but the order only gives me options for A to Z, not oldest to newest as I would expect.  This in turn sorts the date data by the first two digits.  I am aware I could re-format this data to ISO and then the A to Z sort would work but I shouldn't have too, I'm obviously missing something. What is it?  EDIT: I messed up the bounty but this should have gone to @r0berts answer, his first suggestion of Text to Columns with no delimiter and choosing 'MDY' as the type of data works. Additionally, if you have a time (i.e. 04/21/2015 18:34:22), you need to first get rid of the time data. However after that the method suggested by @r0berts works fine.
Encrypting a folder I'm familiar with bitlocker, having been using it for a while, but I am looking at just encrypting a folder instead. But I just don't understand the options it's giving me.  When I right-click a folder > properties > advanced > [x] encrypt contents to secure data > OK &lt; apply > ...  I get:  () apply changes to this folder () apply changes to this folder, sub-folder and files.   This doesn't make sense to me at all, if I encrypt a folder then the whole folder, everything within it is encrypted, then why should I be given these options, how can I have a folder encrypted and files within that folder unencrypted, that seems stupid to me, it doesn't make sense at all.  Can anybody explain why these options exist and how can I simply encrypt a folder? I have this, in D1:  =sum(D3:D)   I want D1 to always be the sum of the rest of column D (D2 is a header)  I sometimes move a row, from eg 8 to 3, and that causes D1 to change to sum(d4:d).    I want D1 to stay as my sum of the column. How does the User Card popup work? We are experimenting with enhanced user card mouseover popups and have enabled them network wide. You can tell which users will trigger the popup because they have a 3-D drop shadowy look to their gravatar:    Hover your mouse over the gravatar and wait. Note that the user card mouseover popup will only be displayed if the following conditions are met:   Is the profile complete, and long enough? We enforce a minimum length requirement. The user's reputation must be >= 1k  If you have more links than are able to be displayed after truncation, those extra links will be shown in the bottom of the dialog. We order links at the bottom consistently -- if you include a twitter, google plus, linked in, or facebook those links are prioritized. It will be visible on a question and answer detail page, any page with a list of questions, and the /users list. It will not be shown when a question or answer is wiki'd. It will not be shown when excerpt summary is defined as &lt;!-- summary: &amp;nbsp; --&gt; we support explicitly specifying your user card excerpt summary using the following syntax:  &lt;!-- summary: This is my profile, there are others like it but this one is mine. --&gt;   The above example will result in:    This is now mostly complete.  The goal is allow people to show  off how awesome they are inline, without having to click through to the full user profile page. How can I manage the "Open with Explorer" button based on user permissions? How to return a part of an array in Ruby? Cannot login to chat.meta.stackexchange.com; server error when trying to access chat homepage I just recreated my MSE account after having deleted it a few years ago. Now, I'm trying to log in to Meta Stack Exchange Chat, and whenever I try to do so, it just fails silently and I'm still logged out.  Additionally, in the same browser session that I'm supposedly logged out, I get a server error when accessing the chat homepage or the chat profile page of any user. I don't get any errors when trying to access any of these pages in a private session. I also was able to sign in to Stack Exchange Chat and Stack Overflow Chat without problems, since my accounts on SO and my parent site for SE chat haven't been deleted.  I think it might be because it's trying to sign me in to my old chat profile, which was not deleted, but that is associated to my old, deleted site account, which clash and thus cause it to fail. How to use a proxy on the command line? I can set my proxy username and password along with proxy settings in the proxy ui but these settings do not work on the command line. How can I use apps such as wget &amp; ping on the command line with a proxy?  Example Details:   username: 1234 pass: linux proxy: proxy port: 8080 Find the value of $\int_{-\infty}^{\infty} \frac{e^{-x^2}}{1+x^2} dx$ . Find the value of $\int_{-\infty}^{\infty} \frac{e^{-x^2}}{1+x^2} dx$     My attempt  First, I know the existence of this integral since $$ \mid \int_{-a}^{a} \frac{e^{-x^2}}{1+x^2} dx \mid \;\; \leq\;\;  \mid \int_{-a}^{a} \frac{1}{1+x^2} dx \mid$$  Next, let $R &gt;0 $ be an arbitrary and $\gamma_1(t) = -R(1-t) + Rt , \;\; 0 \leq t \leq1$ and $\gamma_2(t)= Re^{i\pi (t-1)}, \;\; 1 \leq t \leq 2 $.  So, take $f(z) = \frac{e^{-z^2}}{1+z^2}$.   I tried to find the value or upper bound of norm of $$\int_{\gamma_2} \frac{e^{-z^2}}{1+z^2} dz$$.  However, $$ \lvert\int_{\gamma_2} \frac{e^{-z^2}}{1+z^2} dz\rvert \leq  \frac{\text{max}\lvert e^{-z^2}\rvert}{R^2-1}\pi R = \frac{e^{R^2}}{R^2-1}\pi R $$ So, I can't proceed this.  May I ask you how to solve this? How to get BSD FTP and Telnet back in 10.13 (High Sierra)? There are  with not having ftp and telnet present in 10.13 now as per Apple's dictate.  Has anyone found a solid way to bring BSD ftp and telnet back to macOS vs using inetutils? Is floating point math broken? Consider the following code:   0.1 + 0.2 == 0.3  -&gt;  false   0.1 + 0.2         -&gt;  0.30000000000000004   Why do these inaccuracies happen? How to add electrical fixtures to (custom) furniture? Having electrical outlets, USB charging ports, night lights, etc would be nice to have on some pieces of furniture, like side tables. Several receptacle manufacturers make combination fixtures with USB and power, for instance, or power plus a night light.   I've thought about nailing an electrical box to a (hidden) portion of the table and putting one of those receptacles in it, but what things do I need to consider doing this? Is it as simple as it sounds,  and then just fashioning some kind of plug out of 12/2 or 14/2 wire? Does the answer change if the box is concealed (though still accessible) vs it being completely visible? There's a part in my apps that displays the file path loaded by the user through OpenFileDialog. It's taking up too much space to display the whole path, but I don't want to display only the filename as it might be ambiguous. So I would prefer to show the file path relative to the assembly/exe directory.  For example, the assembly resides at C:\Program Files\Dummy Folder\MyProgram and the file at C:\Program Files\Dummy Folder\MyProgram\Data\datafile1.dat then I would like it to show .\Data\datafile1.dat. If the file is in C:\Program Files\Dummy Folder\datafile1.dat, then I would want ..\datafile1.dat. But if the file is at the root directory or 1 directory below root, then display the full path.   What solution would you recommend? Regex?  Basically I want to display useful file path info without taking too much screen space.  EDIT: Just to clarify a little bit more. The purpose of this solution is to help user or myself knowing which file did I loaded last and roughly from which directory was it from. I'm using a readonly textbox to display the path. Most of the time, the file path is much longer than the display space of the textbox. The path is supposed to be informative but not important enough as to take up more screen space.  Alex Brault comment was good, so is Jonathan Leffler. The Win32 function provided by DavidK only help with part of the problem, not the whole of it, but thanks anyway. As for James Newton-King solution, I'll give it a try later when I'm free. Reserved words as names or identifiers Is there any tricky way to use Java reserved words as variable, method, class, interface, package, or enum constant names? property not working with getter AND setter We can say ‘fried fish’, ‘baked potato’ or ‘minced pork’ using past participles for modifiers.  However, ‘roast’ is different - either ‘roast duck’ or ‘roasted duck’ works, it seems to me.  How should we analyze this?  Is ‘roast’ a noun modifying a noun here, or is it a different form of the past participle?  (According to freedictionary.com, in Middle English the past participle was ‘roste’ – does that mean that this was once a strong verb?) Are DSLRs a dying breed, making now the time to switch to a mirrorless camera system? I came across this  on Stuck in Customs today that makes a strong case to hold off too much investment in DSLR gear, and instead switch to mirror-less cameras like the Sony NEX. The author prefers to call such cameras 3rd generation cameras to prevent any bias.  The crux of the argument lies in the smaller size and faster shooting speeds of the new cameras, while the sensor size is an area where they seem to be lacking (Sony &amp; Samsung cameras are APS-C sized though). Currently the big makers - Nikon &amp; Canon - have practically no presence in this market (Nikon seems to be doing something with the V1). However, they seem to have slowed down the introduction of new entry level DSLR models over the last year as well.  So, as DSLR users looking to build and enhance their kit (there are many like me who've jumped the bandwagon over the last couple of years, and are just starting to build their kit), what are the advantages of sticking with the DSLR system rather than switching to the 3rd gen cameras?  IMO, one point that could cause a massive switch in the DSLR base would be if Nikon &amp; Canon announced mirror-less models compatible with their current lens lineups, but that is a hypothetical scenario.  P.S. There is a similar question on mirror-less cameras, but that seems to be from the perspective of a person starting out rather than a person already invested in the DSLR system. Where to get 2010 Census Block data? I would like to download 2010 Census Block Data for several towns and I can't seem to find it on American Factfinder.   Is it there? And if not, does anyone know where I could find it? I have a valid (multiple entry) business visit visa to the UK on my old passport. I have recently obtained a new passport as I ran out of pages on my old passport. The purpose of my visit is still for business and there are no change in personal details on my new passport. There is however a change in address on the new passport. Incidentally it is the same address that I filled out for my UK visa application while answering the query "WHAT IS YOUR PERMANENT RESIDENTIAL ADDRESS AND CONTACT DETAILS?"  In light of the above, can I still travel to the UK by carrying both the old and new passports? Or, will I be required to either transfer the visa or make a fresh application for my new passport. Thanks. Several times now I have inadvertently lost the .tex file that generated a PDF file with pdflatex. Given what I know of the internal structure of PDF files, it should be possible to embed a text file containing the original LaTeX file into the PDF file so that it can be extracted later.   I am aware of no technology for doing this, but perhaps you are. Does anybody have something like this? How does $cos(x) = \frac{\vec{v} \cdot \vec{w}}{|\vec{v}| \cdot |\vec{w}|}$ make sense? In Multivariable Calculus, the professor said that in order to compute the angle $x$ between two vectors $v$ and $w$, we use the formula: $\cos(x) = \frac{\vec{v} \cdot \vec{w}}{|\vec{v}| \cdot |\vec{w}|}$  He also mentioned "Projection" but I didn't understand much of it. The only thing I got was that we can create a right triangle by drawing a perpendicular line from one vector to the head of the other and compute the angle like that using $\cos$, but I don't understand why we're multiplying vectors, or dividing by their magnitudes…how do those operations make sense?  Also, in the specific example, the result of $\cos(x) = \frac{\vec{v} \cdot \vec{w}}{|\vec{v}| \cdot |\vec{w}|}$ ended up being $1/2 = \pi/2$. Where does $\pi/2$ come from here? I can't understand how we go from $1/2$ to $\pi/2$.