Microsoft Year 2000 Readiness Disclosure & Resource Center

Product Summary

Product: Excel 97 Version: 8.0 Category: Compliant* Operating System: 32-Bit Win Language: German Release Date: 01 Nov 1996 Operational Range: 01 Jan 1900 - 31 Dec 9999 Prerequisites: Office 97 Service Release 2 Product Dependencies: Windows 95, Windows 98, or Windows NT 3.51 with SP 5 or greater, or Windows NT 4 (no specific SP is required, though SP 2 is recommended) Clock Dependencies: System clock Last Updated: 17 Sep 1999

Product Details

Product Maintenance: While Microsoft continues to recommend that customers install the most current Service Pack/Release for non-Year 2000 reasons, we understand that, for many reasons, this may not be possible. In order to aid our customers' Year 2000 efforts, Microsoft intends to maintain Office 97 Service Release 2 as compliant through January 1, 2001. Newer Service Packs are also to be maintained as compliant, and may include additional non-Year 2000 updates. This is intended to minimize the Year 2000 as a reason to upgrade. Prerequisites: Download the Office 97 SR2 Patch from http://officeupdate.microsoft.com/Articles/sr2fact.htm. The changes in Office 97 that were made in SR 2, including Y2K updates, are listed in http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q151/0/20.asp. All Y2K issues reported as fixed in SR2 exist in SR1 and in the base Office 97 product. Description of how the product handles dates: Storage. Microsoft Excel stores dates as numeric values, with day #1 being 01/01/1900. Excel 97 recognizes 01-JAN-1900 through 31-DEC-9999 as valid dates. VB/VBA uses the same serial date system, with the exception of 1-JAN-1900 through 28-FEB-1900, where the values are different by 1, as a result of a backward-compatibility issue for a bug in Lotus 1-2-3 that treats 1900 as a leap year. Previous versions of Excel recognize 01-JAN-1900 through 31-DEC-2078 as valid dates. Formatting. When Microsoft Excel formats a date, it uses one of several default formats. The most common is the system short date. If the system short date is a YY format, then even when the user types a YYYY date, it will by default display in a YY format. To avoid this, the default format can be changed to a YYYY format. Parsing on date entry. If a user enters a date in a "M/d/yy" format, less than 30 is 20XX, and equal to or greater than 30 is 19XX. So, for instance, "1/1/25" used to parse to 01-JAN-1925, but now parses to 01-JAN-2025. Suggest displaying dates in a YYYY format so the century is clearly shown. String date parsing during calculations. If a formula takes a string date as an argument, the string date is currently parsed using the same code as the date entry shown above. This may be a concern to some users because a formula such as =YEAR("1/1/25") returned 1925 in previous versions, but in Excel97 returns 2025. Note that this only happens when "1/1/25" is a string using a 2-digit year format. Also, the Date Migration Wizard, an Excel add-in, is available to aid the user in identifying and correcting these situations. See below for more information and a link to the Date Migration Wizard.   2-digit shortcut handling: See discussion above. Conversion of 2-digit shortcut dates assumes a date window of 1930 through 2029. Common date usage errors: If a date is pasted from one application to another using only the last two digits of the year, Microsoft Excel might parse the date differently than the originating application calculated it. Example: In a non-Excel application, you have the date January 1, 1915. You copy the date, but your system settings are "M/d/yy", and all that is copied is the text "1/1/15". When you paste "1/1/15" into Microsoft Excel, it will parse the date to January 1, 2015. Such an interpretation can also occur when one application is using a "M/d/yy" format while another application is using a "d/M/yy" format. This also applies to importing dates from text files. (See KB articles Q180159 for more information.) The DATE() function is not designed to take 2-digit year shortcuts, since it receives numeric parameters. The DATE() function calculates a number less than 1900 as an offset from 1900. So, if you were to enter a formula such as =DATE(15,1,1), the resulting date would be January 1, 1915, not 2015. Using a format such as "Dec 98" will not function correctly in the year 2001. This is because 98 is too large to be the day of month, so Microsoft Excel assumes it is a year. However, Microsoft Excel assumes "Dec 01" refers to December 1 of the current year. Since Microsoft Excel always stores the complete date, you can avoid ambiguity by entering a full date regardless of the display formatting. (See KB article Q180952 for more information.) Due to the ambiguous nature of text dates, in general they will always have some potential for error. Use serial dates whenever possible and take great care when transferring text dates. Change the default system short date format to include a 4-digit year. Get in the habit of using 4-digit year formats for dates in Microsoft Excel. Such a practice will make the date visible if a user mistakenly enters a date in the wrong century. When dates must be transferred between applications, ideally they should be transferred as serial dates. They should not be transferred as an ambiguous text format that doesn't specify the century and causes confusion between month and day-of-month. For example, the text "2/1/25" could be interpreted as Feb. 1, 1925, Jan. 2, 1925, Feb. 1, 2025, or Jan. 2, 2025. Defined names store references only as text strings. Since they do not store dates as serial values, they are vulnerable to century issues when a 2-digit year format is used. Using defined names in this way is also or concern because users who use a date format with an order other than M-d-y will experience interpretive miscalculations. Recommended usage is to define the name referring to a cell containing a serial date, which will avoid both of the above-mentioned concerns.   Microsoft has created three add-in tools to help users identify Year 2000 issues in solutions created with Microsoft Excel97: The Date Migration Wizard is designed to help users find instances where date-related arguments are referencing text dates that only specify the last two digits of a year. This can cause changes in calculation from previous versions of Microsoft Excel. For more information see Knowledge Base article Q176943. The Date Fix Wizard helps users find errors where the wrong century was entered for a date. It also allows the user to change date formats in a workbook to formats that display four digits of the year. Finally, it allows the user to scan workbooks for the earliest and latest dates in workbooks. For more information see Knowledge Base article Q176943. The Date Watch Wizard runs in the background while you are working in Excel. The Date Watch Wizard will suggest alternatives when you enter ambiguous text dates in cells or functions, change number formats to four-digit years when you type two-digit years, and display an alert when you open text files that contain two-digit years. For more information see Knowledge Base article Q176943.   Testing guidelines and recommendations: In general, avoid testing in a production environment or with non-duplicated production files because one cannot predict side effects with other non-compliant products. Interoperability testing with other Microsoft Office products can be conducted safely. The following areas should be examined to verify whether dates are being properly used. The table below can be used to guide testing of Microsoft Excel within your organization. Sub-System Component   File Various File Formats Avoid storing 2Y dates in text file formats such as TXT, DIF, CSV, PRN. The default column width with default fonts may truncate characters with date formats that have 8 digits and two separators. To correct, increase the column width, or change the font to a fixed-width typeface such as Courier New. Data Import from: text, Databases, External data sources Sort Data imported from databases and other external sources is often imported as text. Importing 2Y dates will be parsed with the 2029/1930 cutoff. This is different from previous versions of Excel, so use 4Y dates to prevent confusion. Basic Use Functions Date Entry Natural Language Functions Functions referring to text dates will parse according to the 2029/1930 cutoff rule. Date entry will parse according to the 2029/1930 cutoff rule. Visual Data Charts Since chart labels are normally used for display, and not for calculation, this should not pose a significant issue. VB/VBA Transfer between VB/VBA and cells Internally, VBA treats dates as serial values, exactly like Excel. However, since VBA uses the "M/d/yy" format, you should avoid transferring the date text through VBA, since it could parse to the wrong century. This will also help avoid issues with international users who have a system short date format with an order other than M-d-y.   Additional Testing Instructions Microsoft Excel has been designed for calculations in the year 2000. Microsoft understands that for various reasons customers may be required to conduct their own year 2000 certification testing. Microsoft provides the tests below to aid customers in conducting their own year 2000 certification of Microsoft Excel. Users who work with dates in Microsoft Excel will benefit from changing the system short date format to one that uses a 4-digit year, (i.e. "MM/dd/yyyy"). This change will allow the user to clearly see the century of a date. Conducting the below tests is only worthwhile if 4-digit years are used. If you decide not to set your system short date format to include a 4-digit year, you can format each cell individually by selecting Format/Cells/Number/Custom, and entering a 4-digit year format. To change the system short date format, press the Start button, then select Settings, Control Panel, Regional Settings, select the Date page, then change the Short Date Style to a format that includes a 4-digit year by replacing the "yy" portion with "yyyy". Verify that Microsoft Excel transitions smoothly into the year 2000:Caution! Before conducting this test, make sure you do not have any software containing a license that expires by the year 2000. This is especially common with beta copies of software programs. If a program determines that its license has expired it is possible the program will no longer boot, even after resetting the system clock. Changing a system clock on a network can affect other computers connected to the network, so it is highly recommended that you isolate the computer from all other systems before changing the system clock to conduct the following test. Set the system clock to 11:59 p.m. December 31, 1999. Start Excel. In cell A1 (cell R1C1 if in R1C1 mode), enter =NOW(). After one minute, press {F9} to recalculate the formula you entered in A1. Note that the time and date shown will be in the year 2000, and nothing unusual has happened to Microsoft Excel. Remember to reset your system clock to the correct time and date after conducting this test. Verify that Microsoft Excel recognizes the year 2000 as a leap year: Start Excel. In cell A1 (cell R1C1 if in R1C1 mode), enter "=DATE(2000,2,28)+1". Note that the resulting date is February 29, indicating that Excel correctly recognizes that 2000 is a leap year. Note: The year 1900 is not a leap year. However, in your testing you may notice Microsoft Excel treats 1900 as a leap year. This algorithm was adopted to maintain compatibility with dates in Lotus 1-2-3, and is by design. The calculation for leap years used by the Gregorian calendar is as follows. If a year is evenly divisible by four, it is a leap year, unless the year is evenly divisible by 100. If a year is evenly divisible by 100, it is not a leap year, unless it is also evenly divisible by 400. (See KB article Q181370 for more information.) Excel 97 uses a number of Microsoft Office 97 shared files for the implementation of dialogs and toolbars, task automation, online help, installation, graphics, file find and file I/O. For additional information that is appropriate for Excel 97, please refer either to the document for the particular Office version that this application came with, or, in the case of a standalone product, to any version 97 Microsoft Office document.

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ANY MICROSOFT YEAR 2000 STATEMENTS MADE TO YOU IN THE COURSE OF PROVIDING YEAR 2000 RELATED UPDATES, YEAR 2000 DIAGNOSTIC TOOLS, OR REMEDIATION SERVICES (IF ANY) ARE SUBJECT TO THE YEAR 2000 INFORMATION AND READINESS DISCLOSURE ACT (112 STAT. 2386). IN CASE OF A DISPUTE, THIS ACT MAY REDUCE YOUR LEGAL RIGHTS REGARDING THE USE OF ANY SUCH STATEMENTS, UNLESS OTHERWISE SPECIFIED BY YOUR CONTRACT OR TARIFF.

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