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
    2011-06-06T20:42:24+00:00

    Hello Ron,Is there anyway to turn this off.  I am working with sequencing data, and many features of Excel get dangerous when working with large data sets.  For instance, Excel changes the displayed gene name SEPT7 to 7-sept and cell value to 40793.  This is especially problematic when I hand data off to other users, and I am not sure that I have located all instances of Excel doing this. Is there a way to not have Excel change the values of any cells when opening a csv, or txt file? Excel is changing data from files before I get a chance to set formats, or add a '.  Thanks

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  2. Anonymous
    2011-08-24T12:12:30+00:00

    Hi all,

    I have just been reading this any many other forums/posts about the problem of Excel autoformatting some sort of text string to a date.

    And yes, anywhere the "solution" is always to preformat the colums first (and I have actually seen quite many moderators and "experts" answering these posts getting quite offended when they are told, that it is not the solution asked for).

    I often handle large amount of data in Excel compatible formats (often csv files), and it really annoys me (maybe I'm a bit too sensitive here :-) that I always have to use the Import function and preformatting each colum in the process (instead of actually justing having the ability to prevent Excel from formatting my data).

    Yes, there may be alot of people just typing "11/4" for April 11th, but Excel is marketed as a professional tool too (and not just a tool for lazy home users), so I bet there is just as many people having data (or typing data) such as "4/88" "01-002" or whatever, which means EXACTLY "4/88" (e.g. packing quantities) or "01-002" (e.g. precise item number), who do NOT want this autoformatted (or whatever you choose to call the "feature").

    A really nice feature/function for these more professional/serious users (and yes, I know home users can be quite serious too :-) would be the ability to disable Excel's desire to autoformat data as a "service" (and so far I haven't found any answers in all these fine support forums, which explains how to do exactly that).

    Regards,

    Kevin

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  3. Anonymous
    2011-09-24T04:09:07+00:00

    Ha! that is exactly what I hate about this option. All the Sept genes, all the March genes, all the Oct genes, etc. get converted to dates. There is absolutely *NO* reason for this feature to not have a disable option. I right-click on many tabular formats of files and open with Excel because it's waaaay faster and easier than to chose to open a file within a blank worksheet and use the import wizard options to format whatever column as text. MS, if you're listening, I love excel but FIX THIS PROBLEM!!!

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