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
    2014-10-09T18:13:07+00:00

    Since it is now clear to me that you are not interested in developing a solution to your problem, but rather in complaining about excel's design. So I will not bother with any further response.

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  2. Anonymous
    2014-10-09T17:41:59+00:00

    I was going to stop replying on this thread because I will clearly get nowehere but I have to reply to that last one. My importer is not the problem. The problem is Excel changing data. It isn't just me that says this. There are thousands of people that say the same thing. THAT IS THE PROBLEM!

    I didn't start this thread. The importer I have again is part of my project and is about the only tool in the world that connects to the target system. The importer is not the problem.

    Excel changes data without my say so and I can't stop it from doing it. It is the default behaviour and it cannot be turned off. That is the problem, pure and simple.

    Lets ignore the dates example I gave. Let's try adding a phone number to a cell and see what happens.

    So, open Excel, do nothing other than type:

    0044800100100

    into cell A1 and press Enter. Suddenly it is

    44800100100

    Now before you tell me to format the cell to text, consider those systems that simply output an Excel spreadsheet as a data export. Virtually every one that I have tried doesn't format the cell first.

    So when you take that exported data in spreadsheet format and import into another system, you have suddenly lost data.

    I don't care that Excel is behaving as designed... It's a terrible design that I should be able to turn off in the application configuration, not on a per spreadsheet basis.

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  3. Anonymous
    2014-10-09T16:59:41+00:00

    If the. Importer you are using does not have the capability you require, then it is not appropriate for your task. If you want to completely automate the process, and you have no control over the source data, and you must use an importer that you also have no control over, perhaps you could set up an intermediary step where you create a properly formatted workbook and then direct the importer to this new workbokk

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