The question is NOT how to select and define the date formats. That's always been easy to do. Everyone knows how to select a date and change the format, and how to define the various options. That's not the problem!


The question is WHY the default date format is 3-SEP instead of allowing me to choose a default. There's simply no reason why I should have to select a date/column/row/etc. and manually change the date format. I should be able to tell Excel what format I want to use as my default, and then get that format every time. After that, if I want a different format, it's easy to change it.