Thank you, Paul.

I followed your instructions of using Ctrl-1, but I did select Text
and typed in January 09. It worked, and since the entry will never be
used in any other way except to identify the place where the list of
new members for January starts, it should be fine.

I am amazed at how difficult it is to find anything in the Help
system. Thank goodness for the good people like you share your
knowledge.

Orrie


On Feb 15, 9:38*pm, "Paul" wrote:



Orrie,

It worked fine for me. *It read it as being the 1st of January 2009, and
displayed as Jan-09.
Mind you, my date/time locale(location) is English(United Kingdom).

One way round it is to custom format the range of cells as * *mmmm yy
(Ctrl+1 to summon the Format Cells dialog box).
Then if you type in Jan 09 and press enter, Excel does the rest for you,
displaying January 09.
It is still a date, and can be seen in the edit box above the spreadsheet as
the 1st of that month.
Numbers and dates etc are alot easier to work with/manipulate than text.
Avoid the text option if you can.

Regards
Paul

"Orrie" wrote in message

...

Hi,
I maintain a list of new members to a club, and enter the new list of
new members for each month. I just want to separate the new members
for each month by entering the month's name in a cell. This will not
be used in any calculations. So, each month I need to enter the name
of the month and the year as text, like this January 09 (or January
2009 would do as well.) But after I type it in and move to the next
cell, Excel 2003 switches the entry to this format: 9-Jan

How can get Excel to accept what I enter and treat as simply text, not
a value. It is not necessary to use the month and year in any
calculations.

Thank you.

Orrie