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
    2014-10-30T17:11:22+00:00

    > it would be EXTREMELY USEFUL to be able to turn off all auto-formatting so that the

    > end user could just enter in their information without worrying that the information

    > will be changed by the program that they are using as a tool. 

    In may be available soon (in the next release?).  See the discussion in Stop auto correction and auto formatting.  Danny Khen - Excel Program Manager - says "This feature is now in our list of desired features." so maybe in Excel 2015??

    here's an extract (my emphasis):

    SandraM12's post on February 15, 2013

    Excel likes to correct text that I type and to turn the text into dates, e.g. "2/2013" is turned into "Feb 2013". Unfortunately I'm not entering a date but something that could be viewed as a date, but it is in fact something else. So I want to turn off this auto formatting.

    Is it possible to turn this feature off on my computer?

    Danny Khen replied on  February 16, 2013

    Microsoft

    Reply In reply to SandraM12's post on February 15, 2013

    Thank you for your feedback. The short answer is - no at this time. The feature is designed with the assumption in most cases, when people type date-like strings (or time-like, or number-like), they would want them to be typed as that data type. Auto-formatting does more than formatting - it determines the type of the data, and that in turns typically gives better experience and functionality around the inpout that you typed (e.g. you can do arithmetic on numbers; you can sort dates by their calendar order; you cannot do all of this on text). For the minority of cases, like yours, where the date-like input is actually not dates, there are the two options that you mention. Formatting cells as text can be done in bulk (entire ranges, columns, rows or sheets), so should not be very time consuming, although of course it does take an extra step.

    Although this feature is not currently available in Excel, Microsoft is committed to continuously improving your experience with our products. This feature is now in our list of desired features.

    Danny Khen - Excel Program Manager

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  2. Anonymous
    2014-10-30T15:21:59+00:00

    I've not tried this, but perhaps you could use a template that formats the relevant columns as TEXT.

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  3. Anonymous
    2014-10-30T15:03:23+00:00

    This issue is not just with numbers in the format x/y but with formats like nnnn-xx-y (which are used for more than just dates, Chemical Abstract Service numbers fall into this trap as well).  I've been trying to get various spreadsheets set up with information in this format and it would be EXTREMELY USEFUL to be able to turn off all auto-formatting so that the end user could just enter in their information without worrying that the information will be changed by the program that they are using as a tool. 

    Your answer was if anything the complete opposite of useful and I really wish that Microsoft did not have a virtual monopoly on business software.

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