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
    2014-11-20T15:18:21+00:00

    How is this helpful when the data has already been entered?  Or when the data is being imported from another source?

    If I wanted a plain TEXT database I'd use WORD!

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  2. Anonymous
    2014-11-20T15:07:05+00:00

    I need to keep an entry in the format of (1918-02-1) in a numeric format in Excel 2007 without it going into a date form.  Is that possible?  Putting the data into a text format is not a workable solution.

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  3. Anonymous
    2014-11-03T19:56:54+00:00

    You're not alone. Unfortunately, that "feature" still exists in Excel 2013. 

    It's like having the cruise control turned on by default when you first start your car...you want to go 65, right?

    We have part numbers that get "corrected" all the time and since a lot of people within the company use Excel, it's often unnoticed and emailed out internally and to customers. And then, if you don't notice that there was previous conversion and you drop it in your own spreadsheet, you end up with another mess and the only way to get back is to have the original person reprocess their data because once it's in there, it stays there.

    I was just looking at some data today and discovered that my bar-code numbers got automatically converted to what looks like latitude & longitude.

    What's crazy "funny" is that I never EVER want numbers converted to dates (even if people mean to enter dates); I simply want exactly what people enter.  If I need, I can convert stuff to dates.

    Simply put, Microsoft needs to make the default the least intrusive...no auto formatting. When needed, conversions added from the options menu. Unfortunately, I suspect they don't have the employees available to update programs like they once had.

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