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
    2013-09-20T16:14:36+00:00

    +1

    CSVs are my problem too.  I'm using Excel to manage a simple CSV that I upload to MySQL via PHPMyAdmin.  I want to format my dates as text e.g., ("September 2009") and every time the file loads it will reformat them in a "helpful" way to ("SEP-09").  If I save the file it will overwrite the existing data with the reformatted text.

    Foolish me for wanting Excel to manage a CSV -- I am honestly better off using Notepad, but this shouldn't be the case.  One could respond -- "Hey guy, why don't you store them as proper dates and then use date formatting functions in your PHP."  And my answer is, I don't care... Excel's obstinacy shouldn't be the broken link in this chain (also some of these data fields are filled by non-dates and different date types, e.g., "Fall 2009" or just "2009" and I don't want to have to code a separate field to specify date-string type when I could just do it by hand for the 50-100 items.)

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  2. Anonymous
    2013-09-07T10:33:18+00:00

    I found a way but it's a bit crazy!!!!!!!

    Control Panel > Clock, Language, and Region > Region and Language > Formats > Additional settings > change Decimal symbol to /   and Excel will not change your number contents to date!!!

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  3. Anonymous
    2013-09-01T13:00:20+00:00

    I have a set of piping data (just over 100,000 rows) which has simple values like 1/2" and 3/4" (among others of similar nature). I want to sort such that the 1/2" appears in the top of my list and the 60" values are at the bottom (i.e. by size). As they are, with the inch symbol ("), 1" floats to the top and 3/4" way down. No worries I figure, I'll just removed the inch symbol, easier that way if I ever wanted to calculate volume for instance. But a find and replace gives me a date instead. Format as number and it simply converts to a date based on Jan 1, 1900.

    I can and have worked around these issues making use of notepad and text files but really? Should I have to? All for the simple matter that Microsoft presumably refuses to accept that we might be entering something other than a date??

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