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

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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.)

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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:¬)

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  1. Anonymous
    2016-05-06T10:51:08+00:00

    This date conversion is incredibly annoying. We get data from many different sources and if you ever forget to tell Excel explicitly to not change it into date it screws you over as good as it can. "Oh, you have 3.40 there? Let me change that into Dez 40 for you because surely you mean something about the second world war right, Excel smart, Excel helps". This is outright stupid. I work many hours a day with Excel and I never, ever need a date, for anything, ever. I always lose time with this nuisance and there is no solution, just crappy "workarounds" that cost time and nerves. This is not a feature, this is a plague.

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  2. Anonymous
    2016-03-30T21:18:38+00:00

    Apologies to all if this has been mentioned already somewhere in these 25 pages of replies, but... yeah. OK, really specific use case, kind of obvious solution, but maybe this helps someone. Anyway:

    If your specific version of this issue is "this cell contains a formula that returns a date-like value, and that value is displayed just as I want it but then mysteriously changes into a date upon saving the workbook" -- which is probably rare, but is what I had:

    put, instead of =formulaname, =" "&formulaname. You'll get an ugly space but stuff like "1 - 5" ("items one through five") will stop doing their mysterious transformation-upon-workbook-save act. 

    At least in Excel 2007.

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  3. Anonymous
    2016-03-24T07:57:26+00:00

    Hi all,

    it is sooo frustrating opening external files and getting all the numbers formated as dates.

    I posted a feedback, feel free to vote:

    feedback-hub:?contextid=464&feedbackid=c2462cd6-10c6-4a3d-a1c7-58e04736db82&form=1&src=2

    (just copy & paste the line to Edge; it will bring up the Feedback Hub app)

    Cheers,

    Patrick

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