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
    2013-11-25T10:40:29+00:00

    Finaly found a tread about this problem, im useing the Norwegian Excel so i couldnt for the life of me figure out what to Google, til now.. iv had this problem since i upgraded to Excel 2007, cant remember why i didnt have this problem in Excel 2003.

    In norway we dont use the / to seperate day to month Our dates looks stricktly something like 01.01.12 and we only use . to seperate or none at all.

    Yet i have vast ammount of data each month that contains anything from 1-2 or 10-20 and 4/12 of total and so on, and yes it has to be written.. most of the data is for display but occationaly i need to go trough about 20 000 to 90 000 lines of data and then it would be Nice to use my originale code that just checks if "1-2" is used or just "1" and if case 1-2 is true then 2 needs to be selected spesificly for by høyre(cell;1) 'think that means right(cellref;1) you guys should be able to understand that, in anycase my originale formula checks for a vast number of Things and the value is used in a sum total formula at bottom... the only problem is, now its hard to notice a date cell seeing it doesnt Return a #error (and that way be skipped from the summery completely) instead of beeing added as a 4xxxx long number wich only makes the sum differ from a few %.. but it wrecks havoc on what the realsumif is suppose to be.

    This is a Company private sheet and code as everything is written in formula to avoid any vba, so i wont release the thing.. beside its too large to be convinient to put up.

    a few ways iv gotten around this lately is by useing text, but it makes my formula too long and breaks the code by not allowing me to add that layer of formula code.. noteably its allready slow to calculate... err but enough about that.

    Iv noticed nobodys come up whit a sollution exept work arounds, is this realy a impossible to fix problem?

    In my Limited codeing knowledge isnt this just like a on cell change do this and in the if checks it checks if theres a / or - or . followed by or something like that numbers, and then Selects New format as date.

    Basicly a 1 line of code decideing to mess everyone up, whiout putting a boolean value to turn this "check" off or on.

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  2. Anonymous
    2013-11-22T09:28:57+00:00

    I guess I keep living in the hope that if the thread continues someone from MS might actually read the postings and get the problem fixed...  (OK, pigs might fly.)

    Ian

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  3. Anonymous
    2013-11-22T00:11:32+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.)

    it's been over three years and no post has answered the original question and problem.

    can we just TURN IT OFF?

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