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Draft Dodger
09-29-2007, 09:32 AM
So, I'm copying some data into excel. some of the data is in a format of, say 1-7 or 2-12. Excel is nice enough to automatically convert those to a date. THANKS EXCEL! Except that they aren't dates, and the conversion process totally fucks up the numbers in a way that I can't undo the mess with formatting.

Is there a way to turn off the Turn Data Excel Wrongly Thinks Is A Date Into A Date Feature?
highfiveoh
09-29-2007, 09:45 AM
I've ran into this problem as well. Not sure what I did to get by, so I did a google search. From what I can tell it isn't as easy as turning an option off. Maybe this will help ...

http://exceltips.vitalnews.com/Pages/T0940_Defeating_Automatic_Date_Parsing.html
Draft Dodger
09-29-2007, 09:57 AM
crud. thanks for the link. I was hoping it was going to be easier than that.
SteveMax58
09-29-2007, 10:17 AM
What are you copying these values from...something like a text file?

What you can do is "pre-format" the cells you intend to paste into to text cells(r-click>format cells>text)...then when you paste values outside of excel into them it will properly display your values with no excel interference.
Crapshoot
09-29-2007, 10:32 AM
What Steve said. Pre-format them as text, and then paste special.
Draft Dodger
09-29-2007, 10:45 AM
What are you copying these values from...something like a text file?

What you can do is "pre-format" the cells you intend to paste into to text cells(r-click>format cells>text)...then when you paste values outside of excel into them it will properly display your values with no excel interference.

thanks - I think that's going to work.
Barkeep49
09-29-2007, 12:55 PM
You don't even have to pre-format it. Even after it's changed into a date, if you change the format of the cells to text it should display it the way you want.
Draft Dodger
09-29-2007, 03:12 PM
You don't even have to pre-format it. Even after it's changed into a date, if you change the format of the cells to text it should display it the way you want.

the problem is, when Excel changes the text to a date, it adds in the year. it won't convert back with all kinds of manipulation that isn't worth the effort.