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
    2014-10-23T16:49:27+00:00

    The date string as displayed by Excel can be converted to a Text string by using the TEXT worksheetfunction (in some adjacent column) and using the same format as Excel is using for the cell in question.  Whether or not this will retrieve the original data is unclear.

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  2. Anonymous
    2014-10-23T16:14:43+00:00

    I have an Excel file with over 40,000 rows, originally imported from a text file but now very heavily edited.  One field has a 3 part code with slash delimiters (eg 12/34/5).  Excel has wrecked several thousand of these values, converting them to dates: eg original value "21/6/10" is now a date "21/06/2010", and this was not noticed at the time (there are over 30 fields, and this particular field is mostly blank. so the date-like structure was not noticed - except by Excel).  Changing the field type to text now is not helpful ("21/06/2010" -> "40350"), and recovery from the original file other than by re-keying all the values is virtually impossible.  Any ideas on how the original values can be retrieved without having to re-key?  Can the date string  as displayed by Excel be converted to a text string?

    Ian

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  3. Anonymous
    2014-10-23T02:56:39+00:00

    Since you are entering the data manually, it seems to me you have three options.

    • Format the column as text before you enter the data
    • Precede each entry with a single quote.  This will force the recognition of the entry as text, and the single quote will not show in the cell (or print), but it will be visible in the formula bar.
    • Use another tool

    It may be that at some time in the future the ability to turn off auto-formatting may be added, but that won't help you now.

    As a scout, you probably do this frequently, so if you choose to continue to use Excel, it may be easier if you to set up a template, where the relevant columns are already formatted as text.

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