I think that you may be confused about what a cell format does. The format
affects only the DISPLAY of a number in a column. It does NOT affect how a
number being inserted is interpreted. The interpretation of dates being
entered is governed by Windows Regional Options (in Control Panel).

Data Validation would allow you to constrain a cell's input value to a
number (not text) or even to a number within in specified range, but it
couldn't stop someone as entering a number as mm/dd/yyyy when you want it
entering as dd/mm/yyyy. You may be better including a text instruction
telling users to insert dates in an appropriate unambiguous format (perhaps
as dd mmm yyyy), and then using data validation to check that a valid number
is the result.
--
David Biddulph

"lily121" wrote in message
...
HOw can i protect the format of a column?

I would liek to fix the format of a date column so that user must enter
date
in a certain format
THanks

"Sam Hills" wrote:



"Deb22" wrote:

Can I protect a cell's numbering format so that the cell can be edited
but
the $ cannot be changed?

I had a similar problem -- I could protect a column so the format could
not
be changed, but if the user pasted a value from another cell, the
formatting
changed.

Microsoft has acknowledged that this is a bug in Excel and I was the
first
to report it.