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
    2014-10-06T13:08:43+00:00

    Seriously... which bit of "I have no control whatsoever over the spreadsheet which is produced by an external system" don't you understand?

    My CSV example was just an example of how Excel takes it upon itself to change my data. My problem here is that the spreadsheet I have is an export from a system over which I have no control, and I have a data importer that pulls that data from the spreadsheet into a database.

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  2. Anonymous
    2014-10-06T12:34:54+00:00

    You may consider it a "fault", others consider it a "feature".

    In any event, if you want the CSV file to contain a date in the format of dd/mm/yyyy hh:mm:ss then you will need to format the cell as such.

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  3. Anonymous
    2014-10-06T12:09:21+00:00

    What I want is that when I type in 29/10/2014 08:43:21 is that Excel doesn't screw around with it and change it to something that it isn't. If I type in text into Word, it doesn't randomly change it and think it knows better than I do. Why does Excel? If I open a new spreadsheet, ther eshould be no assumptions on the type of data I'm entering and I don't want it to try and make a guess either.

    I know when I enter data, I can set the format. But when you're supplied with a spreadsheet already, then you're stuck with it as it is.

    And FYI I just created a new spreadsheet, typed in the date and time above and saved as a CSV. When I opened it in Notepad it said 29/10/2014 08:43:21 and not 41941.3634375 which is what I see when I set the format to General.

    FYI I also just typed in that date and time and Excel decided that I didn't really want to see the seconds portion and simply removed it from view. When I click on it, I see the seconds but when I move away I don't. If I remove formatting the value 41941.3634375 changes 41941.36344 which isn't the same as 41941.3634375. Again, Excel has changed my data that I typed in without my say so as it has made assumptions about what I want to see and also what my data is.

    No... This is not right. This is a fault in the program. It should not change my data. Just leave it alone.

    Now, back to the spreadsheet I receive that already contains my data, how can I remove the changes that Excel kindly makes to it and leave the data as it was entered?

    For the date that I give above, believe me when the user entered that date and time in their system they did not type it in as 41941.3634375, they typed it in as 29/10/2017 08:43:21 which means Excel changed it.

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