Default Appearance

[JimS]

This keeps happening to me. I set up a very simple spread sheet to
keep track of bowling scores--nothing fancy.

When I bring up the sheet the next day the scores all say 12:00AM.
This happens on more than one spreadsheet.

I thought when I formatted cells or columns of cells to general or
number, whatever, that it would stay that way.

Am I missing something here?

 

[Gord Dibben]

How are you typing the scores?

Show us a few samples of your entries.


Gord Dibben MS Excel MVP

 

[JimS]

98,128,132,139...just whatever the numeric score is...I type it into
the cell...you can see I'm a lousy bowler.

I just brought up another spreadsheet and in a cell it says 12:00 am.
It contains the following formula:

=COUNTIF(P143000,360)

This happens on several of my spreadsheets. Not all cells, just some,
and then on other sheets, such as the bowling ones, it's all the
cells.

 

[Dave Peterson]

Maybe there's a misbehaving macro that's "helping"

I'd close excel and reopen it safe mode:

Windows start button|run
Excel /safe

And file open your workbook.

If the scores look ok, then maybe that helpful macro is running when excel opens
a workbook.

If the scores look bad, fix them, save the file and reopen to test. (If they
were bad when you opened the workbook, then maybe the previous save triggered
the change.)

If either of these is the problem, then you'll have to do some detective work.

Chip Pearson has some notes on how to diagnose startup errors:
http://www.cpearson.com/excel/StartupErrors.htm

And Jan Karel Pieterse has more notes:
http://www.jkp-ads.com/Articles/StartupProblems.asp

 

[JimS]

Well, I did as you suggested, and I'm reading the links provided. I
haven't used any macros on this version (2007) since I got it.

I opened in safe mode and only one sheet had the time instead of
numbers..I reformatted, and reopened in regular mode, and all seems
well.

Hopefully that solved it.

Thanks.

 

[Dave Peterson]

Opening in safe mode, making the change and saving shouldn't have fixed
anything. It was just a way of testing.

Keep an eye out for the problem reoccurring.

 

[JimS]

Well, it is doing it again. It's very frustrating. Some cells or
columns always default to "time."

I wish I knew how to fix this.

 

[Dave Peterson]

Does it go away in safe mode?

Well, it is doing it again. It's very frustrating. Some cells or
columns always default to "time."

I wish I knew how to fix this.