Excel requires dates to be typed in American format

In order to type a literal date into an Excel cell, I currently have to do it in the American format (mm/dd/yyyy). This is unacceptable.

How can I have it such that Excel will correctly recognise dates in the standard dd/mm/yyyy format when typing directly into cells?

Note: I am not asking how to use the "cell format" features of Excel. That is easy enough. I want to be able to directly input international dd/mm/yyyy dates into cells and have them register correctly, regardless of formatting.

Answer

Excel follows the Region and Language settings of Windows.

In Windows 10 : Settings > Time & language > Region & language.
You can either take the default values, or you can fine-tune further in Additional date, time, and regional settings (date, time, number settings etc.)