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
    2017-04-04T13:25:31+00:00

    How does one put in an apostrophe before thousands of rows? That's somewhat a rhetorical question but I really want to know.

    On top of the date problem, Excel also converts part numbers like this (0009928) to (9928). Since we have a crazy array of mixed numbers and characters mixed together, all the numbers have to be converted to numbers in order to match up in VLookups. Converting to numbers removes the 000 on the front and consequently breaks the data.

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  2. Anonymous
    2017-04-04T13:25:59+00:00

    I'm not sure where you can effectively complain about this.  But MS employees rarely, if ever, check this user-mediated board.  Perhaps if you write on the Visio board, someone will be able to help you devise a solution.

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  3. Anonymous
    2017-04-04T13:37:58+00:00

    There is ABSOLUTELY NO WAY to fix it in Excel.

    All listed workarounds are only valid for tiny tables used by personal accounting/academic exercises.

    In other words, when opening large csv data dump or real-size dataset with hundreds of fields and hundreds of thousands of records - there is no way to see which sample ids/event labels/process names (in which column and particular row) were **** up automatic by to-date conversion.

    My solution is to use Delimit or Libre Office Calc.

    Open Office is also an option. Depending on what I need, I use both Excel and Open Office.

    Access is also an option that I try to employ locally when I can but that's limiting because hardly anyone here at my company has Access.

    I also employ Power Query. Like Access, Power Query, a little known Microsoft plugin, sets the format without messing too much with the data. The data is a little more dependable and as an extra benefit, the file size is reduced.

    Microsoft - Power Query Plugin

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