Start the process by copying your formatting the same way you'd copy the data in a cell. Click and drag to select the range of cells you want to contain date information. Click on a column header ...

Copy and paste these styles with Excel's Format Painter tool. Click the upper-left cell in the range with the border you want to copy. Drag your cursor to the range's lower-right cell, selecting ...

Excel will then place a dotted line around the selected cell or cells to let you know that something has been copied (in this case, the formatting), and your cursor will change to a paintbrush icon.

If you copy these cells manually, the selection will, ... visible cells. For example, in the above example, we will first press and hold the Ctrl key, then click on cell A1 and drag till cell A6.

Microsoft Excel updates cell references when you copy an expression. Here are a couple of workarounds for those rare occasions when you don't want to change the cell references.