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

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
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.)

Was this answer helpful?

60+ people found this answer helpful.
0 comments
Answer accepted by question author
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:¬)

Was this answer helpful?

40+ people found this answer helpful.
0 comments

311 additional answers

Sort by: Newest
Most helpful Newest Oldest
  1. Anonymous
    2013-05-29T22:34:08+00:00

    I completely identify with the frustration everyone has expressed in this thread. I'm an engineer in the energy industry and have to occasionally import data sets from proprietary software into Excel, and have been stung by the insidious Excel date auto-format. Recommended work-arounds don't work because the conversion happens before I have a chance to look at the file. Frankly, I'm surprised that Microsoft hasn't gotten into legal hot water by now over the inability to globally turn off the date auto-format feature. Eventually the day will come when a critical piece of data gets converted (corrupted) into a date, causing a big expense for some company. If said company loses money or gets sued by clients, who do you think they will turn around and sue? Microsoft. It seems cut-and-dried to me: Microsoft should provide a global enable/disable for the date auto-format feature in the next version of Excel.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  2. Anonymous
    2013-05-23T19:25:40+00:00

    When I set it as text and then take a group of x-xxxx phone numbers so I can get a lot done, it still goes back and changes it to dates.  No auto correct turn off?

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  3. Anonymous
    2013-04-12T14:28:27+00:00

    Hi,

    There is no such feature to turn off formatting in 2003 or earlier version of Excel by default.

    But there is the functionality to format cells exactly as required since the beginning.

    Problems are both on the user and the software sides.

    Regards

    JY

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments