cell formats revert to DATE

[rmeesafety]

Can anyone tell me why my spreadsheets seem to automatically (and undesirably) revert cell formats to DATE instead of GENERAL when I reopen them after having saved and closed Excel? This seems to happen mostly when I password protect my sheets.
This problem has been nagging me for many months now.

[Tony Valko]

A Google search returns lots of results.

This one looks promising:

http://en.kioskea.net/forum/affich-1...to-date-format

[rmeesafety]

Thanks- I actually saw that post but the recommendation to delete the custom format would change all the desired date entries (in all sheets) to a general number, which introduces a different problem for cells that require the date format.

[Tony Valko]

I think after you delete that custom date format then you apply a "standard" date format to the cells that do contain dates.