How do I make a field display a calendar for picking a date in Google Docs Spreadsheet?

Question

Previously, in Google Docs Spreadsheet, I've seen date fields that, when clicked on, display a calender for selecting a date.

How can I reproduce this?

Answer 1

1. Enter a valid Date to a field.
2. Double click on that field.

From http://docs.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=132459:

If you just press Enter after you've selected a cell, the Date picker won't show up. You can still add dates manually.

Date picker recognizes dates with a month-day-year format only if the spreadsheet locale is set to the U.S. If you'd like to use Date picker to format your dates as day-month-year, please set spreadsheet locale to a different country.

Answer 2

A work around is to right-click the cell and use "Data validation", set your criteria to "Date". Then set the "Help text" to: "Enter date (Ctrl + ;)".

This is just a reminder that the shortcut Ctrl + ; will insert today's date, after which, you can double click the cell to reset the date using the calendar.

You can also format the date: Format > Number > ...

Answer 3

Well the question wasn't really answered.

Yes, if there is a date already put into the input, in the correct form, and you double click on it, then you get the nice "calendar" widget. But as far as I could tell with 45 minutes playing with all the options, you cannot make the field automatically go into "widget calendar" mode, so that dates can be easily entered without using keyboard.

Even if you have the column set to only the date attribute it still must be manually typed in the first time and only after can you double click it to get the calendar.

If my answer is not correct then please let me know as this would be a great advantage to my particular application of this product.

Answer 4

1. Format the column as Date.
2. Type 1 (Any single digit).
3. Wait till the value automatically converts to a date.
4. Double click on the cell,the Date picker will appear.