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
    2015-12-18T11:33:25+00:00

    since microsoft wont help us, and they don't want to include ''button'' for turning of the auto date, end restore excel options here is one option that helped me at least with the date.

    in region and language settings i switched the decimal symbol and the digit grouping.

    so, now its is:

    decimal symbol = .

    digit grouping  = ,

    all my imported data is now without dates....

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  2. Anonymous
    2015-11-14T01:35:40+00:00

    Brief testing suggests it works.  But why not just import the values as text?  As a matter of fact, one could write a routine which would not only copy and paste that data from the web page, but also include the hyperlink.

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  3. Anonymous
    2015-11-13T22:50:10+00:00

    In spite of this never ending and unavailing discussion, perhaps something positive should be sometime contributed.

    Obviously many chemists are frustrated by wrongly copied CAS number lists. Because of the lists are adopted frequently from HTML format (for example http://www.chemnet.com/dict/cas/en130.html) there are scarce methods for correct transferring into .xls(x). For this purpose, I tried to develop macro, and have published lately in this thread, unfortunately with severe mistake. Here is a correct version.

    Option Explicit

    Sub Date2CAS()

    'Sub corrects wrongly converted CAS ID's from date to string format

    Dim S As Variant, T As Variant, D1 As Variant, D2 As Variant

    Dim MB As Long

    Dim F As String

    Dim Hyphen As Boolean, MonthLeading As Boolean

    Dim Cell As Range

    Set S = Selection

    If S.Count = 1 Then

    MB = MsgBox("- downward list from here (Yes)" & vbCrLf & _

    "  (can't be undone)" & vbCrLf & _

    "- only this single cell (No)", _

    vbYesNoCancel + vbDefaultButton2, _

         "Fix wrong dates into correct CAS numbers")

    If MB = vbCancel Then Exit Sub

    If MB = vbYes Then

    Set S = Range(S, S.End(xlDown))

    End If

    End If

    Application.ScreenUpdating = False

    For Each Cell In S

    F = Cell.NumberFormat

    Cell.NumberFormat = "@"

    Hyphen = InStr(1, Cell, "-") > 0

    If Not Hyphen Then

    T = Cell.Value

    If IsNull(MonthLeading) Then _

    MonthLeading = InStr(F, "m") < InStr(F, "d")

    If Not MonthLeading Then

    D1 = Day(T): D2 = Month(T)

    Else

    D2 = Day(T): D1 = Month(T)

    End If

    Cell.Value = Year(T) & "-" & Format(D2, "00") & "-" & D1

    End If

    Next Cell

    Application.ScreenUpdating = True

    End Sub

    The example is based on the above cited hypertext.

    For I have tested it only in Middle European date format, I would be grateful to anybody who would try English one and tell.

    Regards

    PB

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