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
    2014-01-22T09:48:11+00:00

    Hi Timsmith14,

    I just had the same issue -

    Solution that Worked for me :

    Type it in a notepad .

    Format the  Excel coloms to 'Text'.

    Copy the values you have in notepad to the Excel file.

    I hope it works for you.

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  2. Anonymous
    2014-01-05T15:50:36+00:00

    After reading through this entire thread trying to find bits and pieces that may help me in my work around for this problem, I truly feel the frustration of both the question askers and the question answerers. This is a big deal that MS Office programmers for whatever reason are not ready to do something about. I also understand that few, if any, of the posters in this forum work for MS Office. So here is my question. “Does anybody know where to post that MS Office people will see this for sure?”

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  3. Anonymous
    2013-11-25T21:21:35+00:00

    something happended with 2010...

     the workbook template seems work.   Just put it in the excel-office start directory and you are set with new work books.

    however, the work sheet template does not work like it did with 2003 and 2007.  Although it lets you set up a worksheet template as a physical file.  Excel 2010 does not use it when it insert an new sheet it into an open workbook.   So in 2010 it is better to set up a single click macro on your Developer Tool that inserts a worksheet and then changes all the worksheet defaults to something more useful for you--such as a specific number or text formats in every cell---and in that way you avoid the date conversion when you use the "new" worksheet.

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