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#1
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Turning off Date Conversion in Excel
I wonder if anyone can help me with this. Some of our company part numbers are being interpreted by MS Excel as dates (ex: 2404-08-12 becomes August 12, 2404). When I work in Excel, I manage to avoid this by formatting the cells which will contain these numbers as "text only." It works about 90% of the time, though for some reason the formatting does not stay permanent and I have to re-enter the data. This isn't too big a problem for if I'm careful about formatting the cells before I start entering data. However, my boss is not very computer literate and he is confounded every time this happens. He cuts and pastes the data into new spreadsheets which aren't formatted properly and loses all of his information because the part number he entered in has now been converted to a serial date value, and it is almost impossible to convert this back to the original part number he was using. Does anyone know how to turn this off in preferences or something? I need a way to prevent Excel form doing this, and I need it to be done in a way that my boss can't screw up because he's cutting and pasting data into new spreadsheets. -- Ken Hutchinson ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Ken Hutchinson's Profile: http://www.excelforum.com/member.php...o&userid=36888 View this thread: http://www.excelforum.com/showthread...hreadid=566058 |
#2
Posted to microsoft.public.excel.misc
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Turning off Date Conversion in Excel
Ken Hutchinson wrote: I wonder if anyone can help me with this. Some of our company part numbers are being interpreted by MS Excel as dates (ex: 2404-08-12 becomes August 12, 2404). When I work in Excel, I manage to avoid this by formatting the cells which will contain these numbers as "text only." It works about 90% of the time, though for some reason the formatting does not stay permanent and I have to re-enter the data. This isn't too big a problem for if I'm careful about formatting the cells before I start entering data. However, my boss is not very computer literate and he is confounded every time this happens. He cuts and pastes the data into new spreadsheets which aren't formatted properly and loses all of his information because the part number he entered in has now been converted to a serial date value, and it is almost impossible to convert this back to the original part number he was using. Does anyone know how to turn this off in preferences or something? I need a way to prevent Excel form doing this, and I need it to be done in a way that my boss can't screw up because he's cutting and pasting data into new spreadsheets. Hi Ken Presumably firing your boss is not an option? You could try preceding your parts numbers with an apostrophe (e.g. '2404-08-12) to let Excel know that it's dealing with text. Regards Steve |
#3
Posted to microsoft.public.excel.misc
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Turning off Date Conversion in Excel
" wrote: Ken Hutchinson wrote: I wonder if anyone can help me with this. Some of our company part numbers are being interpreted by MS Excel as dates (ex: 2404-08-12 becomes August 12, 2404). When I work in Excel, I manage to avoid this by formatting the cells which will contain these numbers as "text only." It works about 90% of the time, though for some reason the formatting does not stay permanent and I have to re-enter the data. This isn't too big a problem for if I'm careful about formatting the cells before I start entering data. However, my boss is not very computer literate and he is confounded every time this happens. He cuts and pastes the data into new spreadsheets which aren't formatted properly and loses all of his information because the part number he entered in has now been converted to a serial date value, and it is almost impossible to convert this back to the original part number he was using. Does anyone know how to turn this off in preferences or something? I need a way to prevent Excel form doing this, and I need it to be done in a way that my boss can't screw up because he's cutting and pasting data into new spreadsheets. Hi Ken Presumably firing your boss is not an option? You could try preceding your parts numbers with an apostrophe (e.g. '2404-08-12) to let Excel know that it's dealing with text. That works if you're entering data by hand, but it doesn't work when you're trying to cut and paste large amounts of text. Any other suggestions? Tammy |
#5
Posted to microsoft.public.excel.misc
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Turning off Date Conversion in Excel
Ken Hutchinson wrote: Wrote: Steve wrote: Presumably firing your boss is not an option? You could try preceding your parts numbers with an apostrophe (e.g. '2404-08-12) to let Excel know that it's dealing with text. Thanks for the suggestion, Steve. I've actually considered somethine like this, but honestly I don't think he's going to accept any solution that requires an effort on his part. He's one of the people who has little patience or understanding of technology. He just expects it to work, no matter how many times it's his fault. Needless to say, this makes my job difficult since I'm the one he calls into his office to fix something he screwed up every time he works in Excel. You can only imagine what happens when he tries to do a date sort. Hi Ken Hmm, I think you may be stuck with this. Excel is trying to be helpful and in your case it really is a pain. I don't know of a global setting that you can change so, even if you're setting the cells to text, the next time he opens a new sheet the same "problem" will be presented. The only real solution I can think of is to change the parts numbers to something not resembling dates (e.g replace the hyphen with a comma or add leading zeros - 02404-008-012). How realistic a solution that is I'll leave to you. Regards Steve |
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