A Sheet Error for dates I can't explain

[Guest]

I am making sheet to check the receipt and ctalog of pay stubs.
I get one every two weeks.
I have been using:
A1 has the header "CY 06"
A2 has the week "01-13-06" (Formar Cell, Date "03-08-98" Note: Office 2000)
A3 had formula =A2+14
This reutrns #VALUE!
whereas this formula in cells B3, C3, D3, E3 for the headers "CY 07", "CY
08", "CY 09", "CY 10" returns the entered date plus fourteen days.
I went over to the K column added the date "01-13-06" and tried again and
got the same error.
Is there something about this date in Excel that is... cosmic? It did
comopensate for the leap-year in CY 08. So... ?

 

[Ian]

Are you sure A2 is actually a number formatted as date, or could it be text.
Text would give this problem.

 

[Guest]

Yes, in fact the range A1:A28 are:
Format >Cells >Category >Date >03-Mar-98
I even tried:
Format >Cells >Category >Custom >dd-mmm-yy
And only the A2 > A28 has an issue with the date.
I went to column K, K1 cell, entered "01-13-06" which returned "13-Jan-06".
In K2 entered "=K1+14" which returned "#VALUE!"
Every other cell I enter a date other than "01-13-06" and add 14 days in the
next lower cell, returns the date plus 14 days. I can then drag for
"auto-fill" until I get an end-of-the-year for December and get dates 14 days
apart.

I don't get it.

 

[Guest]

This used to happen to me too when formatting dates. That way can be
misleading unfortunately. The best way to verify if a date is text or number
is by using this formula. =isnumber(place cell reference here). This will
return True or False. =istext will work too.

To change a date text to number you can simply multiply the cell by 1. e.g.
=A1*1.

 

[Guest]

Yes, I will try this. As an aside, I took the file to work to tinker with
it. Here, I have Excel 2003 and I did not get the error. So, I am thinking
what you say maybe true, but I have tried to isolate any and all formatting
of thecell and actualltrying to chage the format from a date to general and
back to try an remove any "pre-disposition" to the format. I will let you
know.
Thank You.

 

[Guest]

MrScott

It would appear that opening it with the 2003 version of Excel has cured any
of the error generating issues. I really do not want to try an replicate the
error. What I did though, was write down your instructions in my system
log... just in case I hit this again. Thank You.