Your logic sounds circular. By using General setting, you're saying that you
want XL to use whatever it thinks is the natural format. But, then you say
that you'd like a number to display (indiciating that you *do* care what the
format is). But then you go back and say you want a General format??

If you *insist* on having the cell format remain General, you could
accomplish this by losing precision with this formula (or something similar)
and still have the cell format be General.
=VALUE(TEXT(A1/A2/24,"0.##"))

--
Best Regards,

Luke M
"Joe User" <joeu2004 wrote in message
...
In A3, I have a formula of the form =A1/A2/24, where A2 is time (date
serial number) formatted h:mm:ss. (A1 is a number formatted as General.)

When A3 is formatted as General, Excel changes the format to h:mm:ss every
time I edit A3. I have to change the format back to General manually,
which is a nuisance.

I can avoid this by formatting A3 as Number. But I would like it remain
General.

Is there any option setting that disables this autoformat heuristic?

I don't mind if it turns off all "intelligent" autoformat selection.

I am using MS Office Excel 2003 SP3.