Why are my dates showing the wrong way in a SharePoint document?
Posted on 12 June 2026 by Beaming SupportWhen you open a document from SharePoint, particularly an Excel spreadsheet, you may notice that dates appear in the US format.
For example, a date may show as 03/12/2026, which could mean 12 March in the UK format, but 3 December in the US format. This can be confusing when you are working with important business documents.
Why does this happen?
This usually happens because the document’s regional settings are set to English (United States). These settings can affect how dates, times, numbers and currency are displayed in Office documents.
How to change the date format
To update the regional settings in Excel:
- Open the spreadsheet from SharePoint.
- Click File.
- Select Options.
- Go to Regional Settings.
- Open the drop-down menu.
- Select English (United Kingdom).
- Save your changes.
Once this has been changed, Excel should use the UK date format across your documents.
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