If you'll admit that it is not actually a number
and will not be used arithmetically, you can format
the column as text, or precede the entry with a single
quote to make it text by overriding the format temporarily.

Otherwise Excel will treat it as a number and it has nothing
to do with how you format a cell as that is only to tell Excel
that it is a number and describe the format of the display.
--
HTH,
David McRitchie, Microsoft MVP -- Excel
My Excel Pages: http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/excel.htm


"Need Help" <Need wrote in message ...
I would like to know if its possible to stop the function in excel that
automatically changes numbers such as 2-28-6 into 2/28/2006.