Formatting cells for decimals and hyphens

Greetings,

I'm trying to make a spreadsheet of available guns at our store and I need
to type in things like:

..410
..300
..308
..243
30-06

but it self corrects .410 to .41 and if I write 10-11-11 it wants to create
a date.

How do I turn off the formatting so I can type in decimals and hyphens
without excel correcting them to some other format?

Thanks, Mark

Preformat that range (whole column?) as text.
(Format|cells|number tab|Text)

Or start your data entry with an apostrophe:

'.410
'30-06



Kram wrote:
>
> Greetings,
>
> I'm trying to make a spreadsheet of available guns at our store and I need
> to type in things like:
>
> .410
> .300
> .308
> .243
> 30-06
>
> but it self corrects .410 to .41 and if I write 10-11-11 it wants to create
> a date.
>
> How do I turn off the formatting so I can type in decimals and hyphens
> without excel correcting them to some other format?
>
> Thanks, Mark

--

Dave Peterson

Try this:
Select all of the cells you might be entering data into, or just select the
whole column...then

Format>Cells>Number
Category: Text
Click [OK]

Now, everything you type into those cells will be text and not
re-interpretted by Excel as number.

Does that help?

***********
Regards,
Ron


"Kram" wrote:

> Greetings,
>
> I'm trying to make a spreadsheet of available guns at our store and I need
> to type in things like:
>
> ..410
> ..300
> ..308
> ..243
> 30-06
>
> but it self corrects .410 to .41 and if I write 10-11-11 it wants to create
> a date.
>
> How do I turn off the formatting so I can type in decimals and hyphens
> without excel correcting them to some other format?
>
> Thanks, Mark
>

On Sun, 04 Dec 2005 17:59:07 -0800, Kram <[email protected]> wrote:

>Greetings,
>
>I'm trying to make a spreadsheet of available guns at our store and I need
>to type in things like:
>
>.410
>.300
>.308
>.243
>30-06
>
>but it self corrects .410 to .41 and if I write 10-11-11 it wants to create
>a date.
>
>How do I turn off the formatting so I can type in decimals and hyphens
>without excel correcting them to some other format?
>
>Thanks, Mark

Either pre-format the data entry range as text (format/cells/number/text)

OR precede the entries with a single quote. This will not show up in the
printout.


--ron

Wow, that is a quick response...one game of solitaire and 3 quick answers,
I printed out all three.

Thanks very much for the help!

Mark


>>I'm trying to make a spreadsheet of available guns at our store and I
>>need to type in things like:
>>
>>.410
>>.300
>>.308
>>.243
>>30-06
>>
>>but it self corrects .410 to .41 and if I write 10-11-11 it wants to
>>create a date.
>>
>>How do I turn off the formatting so I can type in decimals and hyphens
>>without excel correcting them to some other format?