Thanks for the thought, Gord, but all 3 computers have exactly the same
short date format in Regional Options.

--
Lindsay Graham
Canberra, Australia
---------------------------------------------
Please reply only to the list/newsgroup so that all may benefit.

"Gord Dibben" <gorddibbATshawDOTca wrote in message
...
Perhaps the Windows Regional options "short date" settings are reversed on
the two OS and Excel doesn't recognize dates in that format on the Vista
system?


Gord Dibben MS Excel MVP

On Sat, 2 Aug 2008 18:05:10 +1000, "Lindsay Graham"
wrote:

I asked about this issue some 6 weeks ago on two of these newsgroups, and
got a lot of advice, but no solution. Having been away for a month, I'm
now
back trying to resolve what is still a very annoying problem, and I hope
that someone out there can help me.

I'm using Excel 2000 on a Vista desktop and on an XP laptop. When using
Vista, cell formatting will not work any more. For example, if I try to
apply date or custom date formatting to a cell containing '8/6/08', the
cell
is not formatted as a date. The problem exists even if Excel is opened in
Safe mode, exists in both new and existing Excel files, and exists
regardless of whether the format is applied before or after the date is
entered. BUT if one of the same files is opened using the XP computer,
date
formatting works as usual.

I've searched newsgroups and the web generally, and can find no other
examples of this problem. Is this an incompatibility issue between Vista
and Excel 2000? If so, does anyone know of a workaround? Can anyone help
with any other suggestions?