Hi there,

I have cells formatted as date (e.g. 11/9/03) and I'd like to change
the format to text. But when I do it, the values change as well (e.g.
"36472"). What can I do to avoid this?

Thanks

You can't. Dates, to Excel, are the number of days since Jan 1, 1900. That's
the what you are seeing when you try to change the format to text.

You need to tell us why you want it as text. You have lots of other choices
of formats available.

If you absolutely have to have text, you will need to create a helper cell,
and use a formula like:
=text(a1,"m/d/yy")

Regards,
Fred

"fgg" wrote in message
...
Hi there,

I have cells formatted as date (e.g. 11/9/03) and I'd like to change
the format to text. But when I do it, the values change as well (e.g.
"36472"). What can I do to avoid this?

Thanks

Add a ' in front of the date. However, it's never a good idea to convert
dates/numbers to text.



--
Regards
Dave Hawley
www.ozgrid.com
"fgg" wrote in message
...
Hi there,

I have cells formatted as date (e.g. 11/9/03) and I'd like to change
the format to text. But when I do it, the values change as well (e.g.
"36472"). What can I do to avoid this?

Thanks

You need to tell us why you want it as text. You have lots of other choices
of formats available.

If you absolutely have to have text, you will need to create a helper cell,
and use a formula like:
=text(a1,"m/d/yy")

Thanks for the suggestions. I'm saving this excel file as *.csv and
opening it in a GIS. But the GIS is having problems reading the
columns with dates and times (e.g. 30:26.4). I thought that a format
change could help, but maybe not.

Format won't solve your problems. Convert it to text in a different column,
and export that.

Regards,
Fred

"fgg" wrote in message
...
You need to tell us why you want it as text. You have lots of other
choices
of formats available.

If you absolutely have to have text, you will need to create a helper
cell,
and use a formula like:
=text(a1,"m/d/yy")

Thanks for the suggestions. I'm saving this excel file as *.csv and
opening it in a GIS. But the GIS is having problems reading the
columns with dates and times (e.g. 30:26.4). I thought that a format
change could help, but maybe not.