Excel dates in different language

Excel Dates Displayed in Different Languages

If you share Excel files and reports with users from different countries then you might want to give them a report in their language…and I don’t just mean converting from English to American 😉

It’d be a load of work to create a separate file for each language, so instead we can automate it like this:

Note: if your users have their PC language set to their locale then you don’t need to use this technique, because Excel will automatically convert date formats to their local language. This is for users who want to view their reports in a language that’s different to their PC language settings.

Excel Dates Displayed in Different Languages

We use the TEXT Function to convert the dates by specifying the language ID in the format argument of the formula. For example:

Where [$-0809] is the language ID for English, and dddd tells Excel to covert the date to the full name of the day.

List of Language ID’s

There is an extensive list of language ID’s available from Microsoft here. Below is a snippet:

In Excel 2016 we can either use the last four digits of the Language ID or the Language tag. For other versions of Excel it’s safer to use the last four digits of the Language ID.

For use with the TEXT Function we need to wrap the language tag or ID in [$- xxxx], like so:

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Automating Date Translations

Now that our file contains a table with the different languages we want to support, we can use a Data Validation list to automate the translation:

The key to this is the TEXT formula. Let’s look closer at the formula in cell L6:

The VLOOKUP part of the formula references ‘Table1’ (image below) using Structured References, as opposed to cell references:

Let’s translate the formula:

In English it reads:

Convert the date in cell L4 to text by looking up the language selected in the data validation list in cell I4 , in the Language column of Table1 and returning the language ID from the 3 rd column. Join the language ID to ‘dddd’ so that Excel knows the language and date format to return.

Tip: in the file I’ve included in this post you’ll notice that cells L7, L8 and L9 contain similar TEXT formulas with different date formats (ddd, mmmm and mmm).

Note: if your PC language setting isn’t English then you may need to change the ddd/dddd/mmm/mmmm formats to that of your locale.

Automating Date Translations with Slicers

Another option is to use a Slicer to allow the user to select the language they want to see, like this:

Taking a closer look at the mechanics of this example you’ll see we have a PivotTable in cells I7:I8, which is purely for the Slicer. You can see in the image below that it only contains a single field in the row labels area:

Our TEXT Formula then references the PivotTable (cell I8), which displays the language selected in the Slicer:

This translates the ‘Day’ in the first table and the ‘Month’ in the second table, which feed the charts.

Translate Chart Title

The Chart Title in cell I5 also changes to match the selected language, but if you look the formula you’ll see that it’s simply a VLOOKUP formula that returns the matching title from Table2:

Note: Excel can convert dates into other languages, but it can’t convert words.

Thanks

Thanks to Drazen from ExcelalaCarte.com, who shared this Excel Dates Displayed in Different Languages idea with me, which I extended to include the Slicer technique.

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Reader Interactions

I am searching for common documentation about all available codes or id’s between [ ] that can be used for cell formatting.
in your blog you give a list of language id’s but for e.g. a time format you can use [u]:mm:ss.

Thanks in advance for you reply

I think you mean [h]:mm:ss and this isn’t a language setting, it simply tells Excel to sum the hours rather than show them as a time. I’m not aware of any language settings for anything other than date formats.

First thank you for this good explanation ot the “[$-xxx]” trick….

Then a question : do you have an idea (or solution) how to get rid of the Regional Settings set on the computer that launch the XLS file ?

I give you an example to clarify :
If you use =TEXT(“1/1/2017″,”[$-0809]dddd”) it works like a charm if the Regional Settings (in Windows) are configured for english, but if someone has the Regional Settings set to an other language he should use others “day code” like =TEXT(“1/1/2017″,”[$-0809]jjjj”) for french, because days are “jours” in french.

Thanks in advance
Best regards

If your users have their PC language set to their locale then you don’t need to use this technique, because Excel will automatically convert date formats to their local language. This is for users who want to view their reports in a language that’s different to their PC language settings.

Thank you for your answer. I understand that, but imagine a user wants to see the number as they are formated in an other coutry. For example, in US or GB you will write one million like this : 1,000,000.00 and in FR like this: 1’000’000,00

If the user also wants to see the numbers as they are displayed in an other settings.
Is there a trick to also change the display of the numbers ?

Thanks a lot
Best regards

Thanks for clarifying, Thierry. Unfortunately, this technique doesn’t apply to number values, sorry.

So unlucky…. thanks a lot for your answer, Mynda.

I’m using the language tag to produce charts in English and Welsh (separate), but ideally I need the months abbreviated to only the first three characters as in Jan / Feb etc, so Ion / Chw in Welsh. But Feb comes through as Chwef which takes up a lot of extra room.Reducing the mmm to mm obviously changes the months to numbers so is there any way I can change this (other than reverting to numerical dates?) Thanks. Deirdre

You could try wrapping the TEXT formula in LEFT e.g.

Hi Mynda, thanks so much. I was hoping to add it to the chart axis number format box – currently have [$-cy-GB,1]d mmm ‘yy which works fine for Jan (Ion), Mar (Maw), Apr (Ebr), May (Mai), Jun (Meh) and Oct (Hyd), but annoyingly not for Feb (which comes out as Chwef), Jul (Gorff), Aug (Awst), Sep (Medi), Nov (Tach) and Dec (Rhag). The longer ones, esp Chwef after Ion, spoils the layout. If you can help further that would be great. Deirdre

You can’t force the custom number format to truncate the last character for February. Better to put the format in the source data for the chart.

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Specifying a Language for the TEXT Function

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated July 20, 2019)
This tip applies to Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003

Mikael uses a Danish version of Excel. If he uses the TEXT function to format dates, as in TEXT(A1,»mmmm, yyyy»), the textual format returned shows the months in Danish. He would like the months returned in English instead, and wonders how he can instruct the TEXT function as to which language it should use.

There are a couple of ways you can approach this problem. The first is applicable if you simply need to display a date (and nothing else) in a cell—simply don’t use the TEXT function. You can easily format a cell to display a date in any language; follow these steps:

1. Select the cell (or cells) you want to format.
2. Choose Cells from the Format menu. Excel displays the Format Cells dialog box.
3. Make sure the Number tab is selected.
4. Click Date at the left side of the dialog box. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1. The Number tab of the Format Cells dialog box.

Using the Locale drop-down list, choose a country or region that uses the date format you want to use. In the case of Mikael’s need, picking English (United States) is a good choice. Excel modifies the date formats available to you.

Select the desired date format.

Click on OK.

If you are using the TEXT worksheet function because it is part of a larger formula, then you can instruct the function itself to use a different language for its output. You do this by including a language code (formally called an LCID) within brackets, in this manner:

Note that the bracketed code is within the format string, and the code itself is preceded by a dollar sign and a dash. The code is either three or four hexadecimal digits. (Actually, all LCIDs can be expressed in four hexadecimal digits, but if the leading digit is a zero, you don’t need to include it.) The example, above, shows how to express results in English, but you can pick any of a wide range of countries:

Code	Language
0436	Afrikaans
041C	Albanian
045E	Amharic
0401	Arabic
042B	Armenian
044D	Assamese
082C	Azeri (Cyrillic)
042C	Azeri (Latin)
042D	Basque
0423	Belarusian
0445	Bengali
0402	Bulgarian
0403	Catalan
045C	Cherokee
0804	Chinese (Simplified)
0404	Chinese (Traditional)
041A	Croatian
0405	Czech
0406	Danish
0465	Dhivehi
0413	Dutch
0466	Edo
0C09	English (Australian)
1009	English (Canadian)
0809	English (U.K.)
0409	English (U.S.)
0425	Estonian
0438	Faeroese
0464	Filipino
040B	Finnish
040C	French
0C0C	French (Canadian)
0462	Frisian
0467	Fulfulde
0456	Galician
0437	Georgian
0407	German
0C07	German (Austrian)
0807	German (Swiss)
0408	Greek
0447	Gujarati
0468	Hausa
0475	Hawaiian
040D	Hebrew
0439	Hindi
040E	Hungarian
0469	Ibibio
040F	Icelandic
0470	Igbo
0421	Indonesian
045D	Inuktitut
0410	Italian
0411	Japanese
044B	Kannada
0471	Kanuri
0460	Kashmiri (Arabic)
043F	Kazakh
0457	Konkani
0412	Korean
0440	Kyrgyz
0476	Latin
0426	Latvian
0427	Lithuanian
042F	Macedonian FYROM
043E	Malay
044C	Malayalam
043A	Maltese
0458	Manipuri
044E	Marathi
0450	Mongolian
0461	Nepali
0414	Norwegian Bokmal
0814	Norwegian Nynorsk
0448	Oriya
0472	Oromo
0463	Pashto
0429	Persian
0415	Polish
0416	Portuguese (Brazil)
0816	Portuguese (Portugal)
0446	Punjabi
0418	Romanian
0419	Russian
044F	Sanskrit
0C1A	Serbian (Cyrillic)
081A	Serbian (Latin)
0459	Sindhi
045B	Sinhalese
041B	Slovak
0424	Slovenian
0477	Somali
0C0A	Spanish
0441	Swahili
041D	Swedish
045A	Syriac
0428	Tajik
045F	Tamazight (Arabic)
085F	Tamazight (Latin)
0449	Tamil
0444	Tatar
044A	Telugu
041E	Thai
0873	Tigrigna (Eritrea)
0473	Tigrigna (Ethiopia)
041F	Turkish
0442	Turkmen
0422	Ukrainian
0420	Urdu
0843	Uzbek (Cyrillic)
0443	Uzbek (Latin)
042A	Vietnamese
0478	Yi
043D	Yiddish
046A	Yoruba

The inclusion of a language specifier code in your TEXT format will work in at least Excel 2002 and Excel 2003. It may work in earlier versions, as well, but hasn’t been tested.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (3299) applies to Microsoft Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. You can find a version of this tip for the ribbon interface of Excel (Excel 2007 and later) here: Specifying a Language for the TEXT Function.

Author Bio

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. Learn more about Allen.

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