Why is 2011 turning into Jul-05?

[Adem]

Hi guys, as you can see, I am new here, and I am having issues with excel. My main issue is with the date auto correct function. I know if I put an " ' " in each cell, excel will not auto correct any dates. It is quite frustrating. I type "2011" into a cell and excel changes it to "Jul-05", and the function bar displays "7/3/1905". A work around I found is to right click on the cell, go to format cell, and then click on text. Is there any way to turn off this function permanently, so I dont have to be bothered by it in the future?

I am sorry if this has already been answered somewhere else. I searched the forum, and nothing showed up. However I dont know excel jargon that well, so I could probably have been staring right at it and not known what it was.

Thank you,
Andrew

[David_Schop]

The only thing I can suggest is to ensure that all the cells you want entered as non-dates are formatted to at least General.

[oeldere]

If you put an ' before a value, Excel will see this as tekst.

The other question is an format question.

You could select the whole column, by clicking on e.g. the A and then change the format.

[MarvinP]

Hi adem,

I wonder if you start on Jan 1 1900 and move forward 2011 days if you don't end up on July 3 1905? Does that answer/question help answer yours?

[Adem]

Ok thank you, the crtl + A works for whole columns and rows, even a whole document.
Is there a way to change the settings to permanently disable this function though? It does not seem to add anything to my experience with excel. In some cases if I have to pass data to other people having excel change 2011 into 7/3/1905 causes much unneeded hassle.

[Adem]

Hi adem,

I wonder if you start on Jan 1 1900 and move forward 2011 days if you don't end up on July 3 1905? Does that answer/question help answer yours?

You are correct, however for some reason excel has a desire to Jul-05 show up in the cell with 7/3/1905 in the function bar.

[shg]

The date format Excel shows in the formula bar is the one set in Control Panel.

[Adem]

Thanks for the replies so far, but is there any way to change the settings, so that excel never uses the date auto correction function again?
thanks,
Andrew

[shg]

2011 by itself should never be interpreted as a date unless the cell were formatted as a date beforehand. If you change your control panel setting so that the forward slash is not the month/day/year delimiter, values like 1/2 will not be interpreted as dates.