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MS Office Forum / Excel / New Users / February 2008How to enter date as text
Hi, [Newbie question.] I maintain a list of new members of a club in an Excel 2003 spreadsheet I got from a past membership officer. The list, which was started in 2007 simply used the name of the month in Column A. However, when I wrote "January 2008" in order to list this year's new members, Excel changed the format to Jan-08. When I tried to enter "January 08," Excel changed the entry to a series of numbers I did not recognize as related to "January 08." The date entries are only intended as separators to show in which month the new members joined. The date is not used in any calculations. How can a write January 2008 and have Excel see it as plain text? Thank you. Orrie The easy way is to just put a ' in front of it  Signature-John Please rate when your question is answered to help us and others know what is helpful. > Hi, > [quoted text clipped - 14 lines] > > Orrie You would probably be better off to enter your dates as dates and just format them the way you want to see them. January 2008 displays as Jan-08. It is stored in Excel as 39448 as dates are just numbers to Excel. You could then custom format your display of the date as "mmmm yyyy" which will display as January 2008. With true dates, you'll be able to sort by date and display the dates as you wish Tyro > Hi, > [quoted text clipped - 15 lines] > > Orrie Format the Column as custom format: mmmm yy the you can enter a date as 1/1/08 - less typing! SignatureHTH Sandy In Perth, the ancient capital of Scotland and the crowning place of kings sandymann2@mailinator.com Replace @mailinator.com with @tiscali.co.uk > Hi, > [quoted text clipped - 15 lines] > > Orrie The "series of numbers" is the serial number of the the date. January 2008 serial number is 39455 which is 39455 days since December 31, 1899 or January 0, 1900 For more on how Excel stores dates see Chip Pearson's site. http://www.cpearson.com/excel/datetime.htm#SerialDates Gord Dibben MS Excel MVP >Hi, > [quoted text clipped - 14 lines] > >Orrie Thank you. If I change the date format in Excel, won't that change the date format in all my Office applications? That's how I interperet the article in the Excel Help file. Or can I just enter the format using Excel's Format Cells? Orrie > Hi, > [quoted text clipped - 15 lines] > > Orrie > If I change the date format in Excel, won't that change the date format in > all my Office applications? If you were replying to me then I intended that you highlight just that one Column and custom format only htose cells. SignatureHTH Sandy In Perth, the ancient capital of Scotland and the crowning place of kings sandymann2@mailinator.com Replace @mailinator.com with @tiscali.co.uk > Thank you. > [quoted text clipped - 24 lines] >> >> Orrie |
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