Pasting Dates into Excel from Microsoft Project or Primavera P6 & the 2029 Rule in Excel

Microsoft Excel is one of the key tools in every Project Planner or Scheduler’s arsenal and it has a lengthy list of use cases, which includes analysing dates. Therefore, it is common to find Project Planners & Schedulers copying and pasting data from scheduling software such as Microsoft Project or Primavera P6 into Excel.

One thing to watch out for is that if the dates pasted or inputted into Excel are later than the year 2029 (dates beyond 31st December 2029) and the year part of these dates have only 2 digits, i.e. are in yy format such as dd/mm/yy or mm/dd/yy, Excel might convert the dates to ones a century before.

In the YouTube video below, I explain why this happens and suggests workarounds for formatting dates in Microsoft Project and Primavera P6 before pasting in Excel.

An article on Microsoft website explaining how Excel deals with 2-digit year dates and a little known rule called “The 2029 Rule”. How Excel works with two-digit year numbers https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/troubleshoot/excel/two-digit-year-numbers.