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

2014-07-10T00:41:06+00:00
The only way I know to prevent that from happening is to
- have the cell formatted as text before entering the value
- if you are importing a file, be sure to use the import option (not open) and use the text-to-columns or text import wizard to ensure that column is treated as text
- if it's too late for the above, in addition to your format option, you can use a formula like =TEXT(A1, "mm-yyyy"). Then Copy/Paste Values back to some column
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Anonymous

2014-07-09T22:02:34+00:00

So is there way to use Sum or a different way to change autocorrected cells back?

I have a list of part numbers:

01-5108, 01-5109, 01-5110, 01-5111...

Which Excel changes into:

Jan-08, Jan-09, Jan-10, Jan-11...

When trying to reformat the cells I end up with:

1171699, 1172065, 1172430, 1172795...

Giant pain to try and fix this!

The only "jerry rigged" way I have found is to reformat them Custom: mm-yyyy, but I would still prefer to have them be fixed from the beginning.
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Anonymous

2014-05-20T03:49:09+00:00

Dude, I have the same issue. Example: 02-21-9217 is not a date, yet Excel changes it to a date. Its a part number. To make matters worse - change it to a text and it changes the number completely.

Try it, and then give a proper response. The Auto Data feature needs to be turn off................

If you can't - just don't write - Tyam
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