date display:gets truncated

[webguync]

whenever I type July08 into excel it gets truncated to Jul-08. I don't want this. How can I get it to display exactly as I typed?

[daddylonglegs]

If you want it to be exactly that format you could custom format the cell as mmmmyy, in which case the value remains a date....

...or you can pre-format the cell as text to allow you to type whatever you want

.....or you can precede with an apostrophe [which tells Excel you're inputting text], i.e. just type 'July08

[thestappa]

How would I do this for a bunch of cells. Basically I have about two thousand rows of data I imported with dates (mm/dd/yyyy). I cam using a formula to build a statement with the date eg.. --- ="something happend on"&B2 ---
and the new cell shows 'something happend on 39119' and not 'something happened on 2/6/2007'

I can get the cell with the formula to show the mm/dd/yyyy by putting an apostrophe in front of the field with the date in it but I can't seem to copy that to the rest of the rows.

How would one make all of the rows text or value or whatever is necessary for my formula to show me mm/dd/yyyy?

[daddylonglegs]

Try changing the formula to

="something happened on "&TEXT(B2,"mm/dd/yyyy")

[thestappa]

Perfect. I kept trying things like cstr etc.. but those are VB only. So simple.

I was about to go nuts.