Stop auto correction of number into a date

Anonymous
2010-04-09T11:08:55+00:00

When i work with excel, i do data entry, some of the numbers that i type in can be interpenetrated  as dates. when this happens excel automatically changes the format of the cell from general, to date. i want to be able to stop this auto correction.

I know there are a number of ways to avoid this happening, but i am fed up with these methods. i simply what to turn the auto correct off, so that instead of what i type into the cell changing, what i type into the cell shows exactly what i typed in.

really hope there is someone out the who knows how to do this.

thanks

Microsoft 365 and Office | Excel | For home | Windows

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

0 comments
Answer accepted by question author
Anonymous
2010-04-09T17:09:58+00:00

If you format the cells as Text, all entries will be entered as text

(leading zeroes will be retain, date-like values won't be converted to dates, etc)

...CTRL+1 (to view the formatting dialog window)

...Select: Number_tab...Category: Text

That should resolve most (but not all) of the problem.

Does that work for you?

Ron Coderre

Microsoft MVP - Excel (2006 - 2010)

P.S. If any post answers your question, please mark it as the Answer (so it won't keep showing as an open item.)

Was this answer helpful?

60+ people found this answer helpful.
0 comments
Answer accepted by question author
Anonymous
2010-04-09T16:55:47+00:00

Tim

I understand your frustration but this is not an autocorrect issue. 

Typing in 1/5 will automatically be recognised as a date as that is what it is unless... you signify that it is a formula and you expect the answer 0.2 to appear or it is a text item in which case you must preceed the data with a ' apostrophy.

In signifying the that the item is text you will have a data item which is left aligned, as all text is by default.  All other items in this column (even if purely numeric such as product codes) should aligned left.  Product codes though numeric should never be treaded like numbers, if you do, then expect issues.  Telephone numbers are similarly not true numbers, if they were treated as such, leading zeros would be dropped.

Though the whole idea of having to type in that extra character of ' is a pain to remember, it will make your data more acurate, reliable and portable.

Pat PS If you found this useful please vote. Thank you:¬)

Was this answer helpful?

40+ people found this answer helpful.
0 comments

311 additional answers

Sort by: Newest
Most helpful Newest Oldest
  1. Anonymous
    2016-07-05T20:00:09+00:00

    People can autoformat but machines should not.  Auto formating is as stupid auto filling a database field.  It always increases errors.  Microsoft should allow us to turn a stupid feature off.   It is an option I always ask for in every survey.  Someday, someone at Microsoft may fix this....but only if everyone continues to complain or buy other software packages that do not have this feature...unfortuantely when the #1 spreadsheet program has a flaw, we are all stuck with it.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  2. Anonymous
    2016-07-05T18:57:52+00:00

    Do you actually think that everyone using Excel is supposed to be a data manager? Is that really your position?  If this "feature" is so important, why are there 26 pages of people complaining about it. You even mentioned that you look to see if it was "fixed" so clearly, you think it needs to be corrected.

    We're not saying there are no alternatives; we're writing because these alternatives are completely unnecessary.  A simple "Opt In" would solve this and I wouldn't need to post here any more. Everyone agrees that this is a bug; it may be useful to some but it's still a bug.

    Excel is not a database but it gives people, with varying degrees of expertise in data management, the ability to manipulate and share data.  You can pretend that you need a degree in data management to use Excel but that's not going to change how people use Excel. You can pretend that your average person should invest the hours needed to learn MySQL, MSSQL, Access, etc and all that is required be efficient in these programs but that's not going to change who actually uses Excel.

    NO, why doesn't Microsoft just fix the problem?

    (You can even set it up, to automatically manage this, during all export/import operations.) But, you would know that, if you had actually done it before... right? Oh wait... you haven't... "b d" << (That's two thumbs up, btw. )

    Nice! Two thumbs up for the straw man argument. Pretend all you want that that you know what experience I've had; you made an assumption based on no information.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  3. Anonymous
    2016-07-05T17:33:46+00:00

    ^^ This guy, "anyone who works with delimited files is doing it wrong, therefor excel should auto-format strings to time-date fields using logic that often fails." -pickle_bumps  Huh???

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments