when looking a Chip's page, note that you are changing
the value of the cell to a date. Dates are the number of
days past a reference point such as Dec 31, 1899.

Your formatting of a phone number did not change the
value of phone number and was just formatting. I would
suggest that you use text values for phone numbers,
they work out much better that way (in my opinion),
regardless of whether you left or right justify them.

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HTH,
David McRitchie, Microsoft MVP - Excel

"Dave Peterson" wrote in ...
Visit Chip Pearson's site:
http://www.cpearson.com/excel/DateTimeEntry.htm

And you'll find one way.

Jennifer wrote:

I would like to enter a date without having to enter -'s or /'s and have it
display mm/dd/yy. I know how to make this work for phone numbers but can't
seem to find the correct formatting for dates. Thank you.
--
Though daily learning, I LOVE EXCEL!
Jennifer

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Dave Peterson