In the Microsoft Office Spreadsheet Component, the following behavior occurs with date values evaluating to a date prior to the year 1900. This is different than Excel which only allows years in the range from 1900 to 9999.

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Dates Prior to 1900

In the Office Spreadsheet Component, you can enter a date whose year is earlier than the year 1900.

For example, the following date is valid in the Office Spreadsheet Component, but not valid in Excel: Entering this date in Excel will evaluate to a text string.

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Entering a Large Number

In the Office Spreadsheet Component, entering a time with hours larger than 32767 evaluates to a date before the year 1900, and the underlying value is a negative number.

For example, if you type the number 32768:00, the date 4/4/1896 8:00am is displayed. The number that appears in the Formula in active cell box of the Spreadsheet Property Toolbox dialog box, is -1365.33333333333.

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Negative Number Evaluates to Date

If you enter a negative number into a cell, you can format the cell with a date format and a date before the year 1900 appears. For example, if you enter the number -123456 and format the cell with a date format, 12/26/1561 will appear. In the Office Spreadsheet Component, when you click Export to Excel or copy the date to Excel, the date will appear in the Excel workbook as a series of pound signs (########).

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To correct this problem, change the number format from a Date format to another format, such as General. Excel does not recognize dates prior to the year 1900 and therefore cannot format a cell with a date number format.

For more information about differences between the Office Spreadsheet Component and Excel, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

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Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article.

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