You need to understand that cell format is a display function only, and
has no effect on how the input parser interprets your entry (with the
exception that setting the format to Text bypasses the parser). So there
is no format that would allow the type of entry that you're asking for.

See

http://www.cpearson.com/excel/DateTimeEntry.htm

for a workaround.


In article ,
"Smurfoz" wrote:

When entering a date in Excel what format should be used to allow the user to
only key the actual characters. For example, we want to key in 17102005 and
would like this to show in the cell as 17/10/2005. We are having problems
with this