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

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

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.)

0 comments

Answer accepted by question author

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:¬)

0 comments

311 additional answers

Anonymous

2014-11-27T02:39:30+00:00

On a per-cell basis: Preceed cell data with a ' (apostrophe)

* Also works in Google Docs / Google Spreadsheets

On a program-wide bases, see this support page.
Was this answer helpful?

0 comments No comments
Anonymous

2014-11-20T16:41:30+00:00

It is not helpful for data that has already been entered.
Was this answer helpful?

0 comments No comments
Anonymous

2014-11-20T16:23:05+00:00

As you will see from earlier entries, this has (at last!) been recognised as a product issue and is to be considered for the next release.

Meanwhile this thread is about workarounds. Excel is rather weak on multipart data types and has nothing to offer but formatting on user defined types other than date/time.

For a manual sheet, the easiest way round the multipart problem is to put each part in a separate column, with an extra column containing a string function to combine the parts in the desired format. This allows each part to be held in a numeric format without any messing from Excel.

For imported data, you can use the wizard to identify the columns and data types. Generally it is safest to treat the multipart data type as a single text column for loading and then parse the parts to separate columns.

In both cases, value-copy the data to itself to remove the concatenating and parsing formulae respectively.

Alternatively, use data staging and then value-copy to the final area.
Was this answer helpful?

0 comments No comments