Table of contents
Language Settings
Look at your taskbar right now and you’ll probably see “ENG” depending on your machine’s selected language. Clicking that will open the language options available on your laptop. You should have the English (United Kingdom) option selected as that matches the locale used on PMS.
If you don’t have the UK option available, simply click on Language Preferences as shown to the right and add it via the “Add a language” option in the Settings window that pops up.
Aside from the keyboard option, the “Regional Settings” of your device is an integral part of this process as well (Excel actually uses this to drive its format).
- Open your Start menu and type the phrase “Region Settings”
- Press Enter on the first option that comes up, it should look like this:
- The Region window should pop up allowing you to change your country/region, the regional format you want your system to use, and the regional format you want regarding dates.
IMPORTANT
You may need to restart your device for these changes to take effect.
Good to know
For those using online versions of MS Office, you’ll need to go to https://www.office.com > Settings cog wheel (top right) > “Language and time zone”, then update there.
Excel Date Fixes
“It's the Date that’s wrong, not me”
- In Excel, select your problematic column
- Find the “Number” submenu under the Home tab and click on the dropdown
- Upon clicking the dropdown, you’ll be met with many options to set your data type. Either Select “Short Date” or “Long Date” depending on your preference and your data should now be uniform.
- Alternatively, you can select the “More Number Formats” Option, which will allow you to select specific date configurations as well as the date locale you’d like the dates to be in.
Going Further
Want to learn more useful information for your day to day work? Make sure to check our Productivity Tips article and the Expectations & Best Practices article.