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
    2011-02-25T05:25:09+00:00

    As a matter of interest, within earlier versions of Excel Tools -> Options ->Transition ->check Transition Formula Entry will provide the decimal equivalent, setting the spreadsheet to display fractions up to three digits may provide a suitable solution with the caveat stated above.  This may or maynot be available in Office 2007, I am currently unable to verify whether this is the case.

    This is pure gold right here.  I have looked for this in the past and forgot how to do it again.

    I'm still running Excel 2002:

    Tools -> Options -> Transitions Tab -> (check box on) Transition Formula Entrys.

    Also Excel Starter 2010 on Windows 7

    Options -> Advanced -> (check box on) Transition Formula Entrys (all the way down at the bottom).

    When pasting data from the internet, like heights, win-loss data, anything with hyphens or dashes, it will act as if the cells are math opperations, and will evaluate a height of 6-4 as 2, but a simple search for = and replace with ' will produce the desired data.

    Microsoft needs to add this to the help in Excel, this is really the beginning of ineptitude that Microsoft products thrust upon me while working in Excel and Word.

    Now to make it easier to find:

    keywords: stop turn off I hate excel auto date format hyphen slash / -

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  3. Anonymous
    2010-11-30T20:03:34+00:00

    Since this question was never officially answered, I will ask it again:

    Is there a way to turn off the auto-formatting "feature" in which Excel automatically changes anything that it thinks looks like a date into a date (registry hack, software patch, ANYTHING).

    No there isn't a way.

    >3/88 is NOT a date.

    It is as far as Excel is concerned albeit quite a long way in the future.

    If this post answers your question, please mark it as the Answer.

    Mike H

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