Set default year to be something other than current year

Question

I'm entering data from years 2012 & 2013 into a Google Spreadsheet, and there's a lot of it with lots of dates.

Is there a way to set the sheet or a range of cells to use the year 2012 or 2013 instead of my having to enter the year as 12 or 13 every time I enter a date?

Answer 1

If all the dates you were entering were all in a single year it would be easy.

1. enter all the dates in Column A by just entering the month and date. For example enter 1/7 into cell A2. Google sheets will interpret as 1/7/2018.

2. In column B enter the formula

   =DATE(2012,MONTH(A2),DAY(A2))  
   

3. Copy column B, but use paste special two times into column C:

   • once to copy the values only
   • and a second time to copy the formatting only.

4. At this point you can remove columns A and B.

But the formula wouldn't know which were supposed to be 2012 and which would be 2013.