That is Excel helping you.

To turn off the automatic formatting go to ToolsOptionsEdit.

Uncheck "extend data range formats and formulas"


Gord Dibben MS Excel MVP

On Sun, 16 Aug 2009 14:17:01 -0700, Gregg
wrote:

Hi Dave. I enter in 799130, press return, and the numbers change to
12/9/4087. I do have a date in the cell directly above the cell in question.
I guess Excel is just formating all the numbers in this column to dates, but
I don't want that. How do I turn this formatting off? Thanks for your help.

"Dave Peterson" wrote:

If the values you enter look like dates, then excel will treat them like dates.

You can stop this by making sure you're entering the values as text.

You can Pre-Format the cells as Text
(Format|cells|number tab in xl2003 menus)
Then enter your value.

Or you can prepend an apostrophe to your entry:
'12/31

If you're really typing simple numbers (whole numbers or decimals), then this
isn't the problem.

Maybe you have the cell formatted as a date--or maybe you have an event macro
that's firing that's doing the change.

(But you'll have to supply examples of what's happening to get a better guess
from me.)



Gregg wrote:

I don't use Excel much, but when I enter a set of numbers in one cell, it
automatically changes to a date format (mm/dd/yyyy) as well as changing the
numbers I entered when I hit return or go to the next cell. How do I disable
this feature? Thanks.

--

Dave Peterson