Hi David,
Thanks but no. I never had the Transition on, even. It's something in
the worksheet I think, because in a new worksheet the problem goes away.
And now here at my office machine, in that worksheet I can't format
cells anymore either. But in a new worksheet, no problem. I made this
worksheet by opening a csv text file. I think this is at the root of the
problem. How do I resolve it?

Thanks for your input.
Margo Guda.

David McRitchie wrote:
Hi Margo,
Finally, I think we've got it.

Check your tools, options, transition (tab), uncheck transition options

Was that the problem it would be doing math on your cell
2006-12-15 would be the equivalent of -2006-12-15
I don't know how you actually enter a date with transition options on,
but you want them off so you can work in Excel as Excel. The
Quattropro gave it away must be like Lotus 1-2-3 which is what the
transisition options refer to...
---
HTH,
David McRitchie, Microsoft MVP - Excel [site changed Nov. 2001]
My Excel Pages: http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/excel.htm
Search Page: http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/search.htm

"Margo Guda" wrote in message ...
Hi Niek,
I had tried formatting the cells as dates and then entering the dates;
that did not help. I also looked at my regional settings and tried every
form of entering a date. None of the suggestions help, and now of course
I can't even format the cells because somehow format is unavailable
(nothing happens when I select it on any menu). This happened after I
found the workaround with Quattropro. There are some other cells where I
want to use a different format, and I can't even get to a format dialog
window.

Margo Guda.

Niek Otten wrote:
Hi Margo,

Probably the cells were formatted as text before you entered the dates. Maybe you formatted the cells as dates after you entered
the dates. That doesn't help; if they were text they remain text.
Format the cells as General (or dates) and then enter the dates.
Does that help?