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
    2014-10-09T12:46:17+00:00

    since the original file has the proper information, you will need to alter the importer.

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  2. Anonymous
    2014-10-09T12:12:13+00:00

    The production of this Excel file is automated from another system. The plan is for the importer to pick this file up from a specific location and then to run automatically on a scheduled basis. This process happens on a customer site every day. My job is to automate the process which requires no human interaction so opening the spreadsheet and creating a second column and manually formatting that, is NOT an option.

    My job is to ensure this has no manual interaction at all.

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  3. Anonymous
    2014-10-09T11:45:56+00:00

    Thanks for the clarification.  So you have to use Excel to open, modify and save the XLS file because you need to set up the import profile for the ODBC connection.  Excel is changing the date/time format to show only the date and the importer is taking what Excel displays (just the date) and not the actual date/time data.

    I think the answer is to reformat the data before you save the file.  If the dd/mm/yyyy hh:mm:ss format is not on the standard list in your Excel version then create a custom format for it.  

    In custom format use MM for month and mm for minutes.

    Also, use HH for hour on 24 hour basis, hh for am/pm basis

    Two other things to watch:

    1.  the importer may be checking the cell format codes; if so, you may have to split the data and time into separate columns and amend the import profile accordingly.
    2.  Excel may be messing up the date for the first 12 days of the month by switching day and month, so the 4th of January becomes April 1st.

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