Stop auto correction of number into a date

Anonymous

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

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Anonymous

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.)

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Anonymous

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:¬)

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311 additional answers

Anonymous

2016-07-05T14:47:59+00:00

Most people in this thread are not using Excel as a database, so shouting "STOP using Excel as a database!" does not help them. For me personally, I am working with data in data science applications--mostly this data is accessed through python, c++, MATLAB etc, but never SQL. Turns out, however, that Excel (believe it or not) is extremely convenient for a few things; I like to use Excel daily. What I've done, whenever possible, is write date and time fields to a format that Excel doesn't recognize as date or time. That is the only way to prevent Excel from making a complete mess of things. I concur with the others in this thread: this behavior is a bug!
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Anonymous

2016-07-05T13:50:02+00:00

You are incorrect; this bug affects the bulk of users; EVERYONE who uses Excel, has been frustrated by this and they don't need to be using Excel as a database to be frustrated by this.

You are correct to mention that people use Excel incorrectly but that doesn't address the fact that Microsoft has clearly chosen not to fix a BUG that they've known about for a decade. Whether 5 or 5 million rows, the problem exists.

The fact remains that people are using Excel to store and manipulate data; that's what it's for. When the program changes data by default, that's a bug. As this thread suggests, it's not a small one.

I know when to use a database and I am able to do this. Lets see how well that suggestion of yours works in an actual company where people are just trying to share data between each other. Your suggestion CANNOT work. Databases are not freely passed around. Of course the data may be exported but eventually, someone is going to need to manipulate that data in Excel. When they do, they WILL run into this issue. ****
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Anonymous

2016-07-05T01:57:10+00:00

I don't know if it's been mentioned before, but Microsoft is probably of the same opinion... The people that get sick of this issue, are those that use Excel as a database - it is not meant for this - you should be using Access or something better, like Oracle.

Microsoft has no intention of addressing this issue, as it does not affect the bulk of their users - business users - because they don't use Excel as a database.

Yes, I Google it myself occasionally, when a new version comes out, just to see if it has been changed, but I'm not depressed, to find out otherwise.

Trust me, it's worth it - take the time to learn Access, SQL Lite, Oracle, etc... they can easily be setup, to automatically import, filter, and format your data, and even give warnings when inconsistencies arise - all without ever learning/using any vba, or macros.

STOP using Excel as a database!
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