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
    2011-09-24T04:18:13+00:00

    this works only for the current active sheet, it does not persist when you restart the program.

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  2. Anonymous
    2011-10-31T03:55:38+00:00

    Hi,

    Looks like I'm not the only one suffering from this problem. The Excel has been in many ways powerful, but this little feature had been an annoyance since forever. My problem is not when entering the data (if I'm typing myself, I'll put a ' in front, regardless of it's being really annoying), but I export data from other software as .txt and then import into Excel for calculation. It's really frustrating to see all my data name turned from 1-4 to 1 Apr, which means nothing to me (1-4 actually means 'specimen no.1, 4am') Does anyone know where we can 'suggest' to the MS group to develop an 'off' option for this feature?

    Cheers,

    hat

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  3. Anonymous
    2011-10-31T08:09:14+00:00

    Hi,

    To whom it may concern,

    If ever any one is using ms Access, or a real Database application, the first step is to design it correctly, and to indicate what is the content type for every field.

    XL provides a "flexibilty" to try to recognise/evaluate the data if every one is happy enought to use the general format.

    XL is a powerfull calculator but certainely not a database application, even if it offers that flexibility,

    Regards

    JY

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