"Luke M" wrote:
Your logic sounds circular. By using General setting,
you're saying that you want XL to use whatever it thinks
is the natural format.

Yes, that makes sense. I had not thought of it that way. Thanks.


----- original message ------

"Luke M" wrote in message
...
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.