Celling formatting failing

  • Thread starter Thread starter agrei8
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agrei8

Hi All,

I am having an unsual behaviour and am trying to track the cause. In
excel 2000 I am entering the date 17/12/1969 in a cell e.g. B2 then a
new date 17/12/2004 below it in C2 then lastly third a date 17/12/2005
in D2.

I then highlight the 3 cells which show the date exactly as entered
above. I go to Format > Cells and change on the number tab the
category from General to date. I then select the desired type (in my
case being 17-Dec-69 in the first dates case).

The behaviour I see is that the Sample preview above the types field
does NOT change to match the selection. Nor does it apply the selected
format when I click OK.

On other computers with Excel 2000 (same release version of the
software as far as I can tell) this doesn't happen. The sample preview
changes to match the selected types and applies when OK is clicked.

Any ideas anyone. I can't find anything at the MS KB site. Any
suggestions??

Very frustrated!!!!

Cheers!

Adrian
 
Hi Adrian

if you open a brand new workbook and try the same - what happens?
does it work if you only do 1 number at a time?
does it work if instead of choosing date you choose custom and type
dd-mmm-yy?

additionally, if you just click on the 17/12/1969 one and choose format /
cells - WHAT shows under General, is it 25554 or is it something else?

to me it sounds like your numbers are being entered as "text" because when i
enter a number i don't need to go format / cells and change it from
'general' - date is already selected, i just have to change it to the date
format i want.

Let us know what you find
Cheers
JulieD
 
Hi Julie,

Regarding -"if you open a brand new workbook and try the same - what
happens?"

On the computers I was using...the same behaviour. A new workbook
doesn't solve the problem. On the 3 computers in fact being used the
behaviour was exactly the same.

"does it work if you only do 1 number at a time?"

No select 1 or just 2 or all cells no formatting occurs.

" does it work if instead of choosing date you choose custom and type
dd-mmm-yy?"

No! The sample preview does not change or formats when I click OK.
Trying to type in the d-mmmm-yyyy or any variation for the various
date formats doesn't alter the sample. It just displays the preview of
what i typed into the cell in the first place.

"additionally, if you just click on the 17/12/1969 one and choose
format / cells - WHAT shows under General, is it 25554 or is it
something else?"

Following those steps, no matter what category I select or type I
choose from the list the sample displays the date entered into the
cell exactly as is. It doesn't update or change.

We had considered the cell info being entered as text but there is no
way to alter the cell formatting to rectify it.

I am starting to think that the default install which is done as an
unattended automatic install, has a glitch. I have seen this type of
thing happen in the past. Doing an office repair via add/remove
programs in the control panel tends to fix this.

Unfortunately to add to the confusion I tested some others computers
in the same lab with the exact same build/image and Excel works
perfectly! Exactly the way it should.

Soooo.... still no the wiser as to whats going on! Big mystery.

Cheers!

Adrian
 
Hi

definitely sounds like for some reasons your workbooks are treating the
cells like they have been formatted to text - this is odd behaviour for a
new workbook - especially on 3 machines ...
one thing you might like to try is to select your date cells and choose edit
/ clear / formats - and see if that puts it back to a "date" .. you know
it's a date when you see under format / cells - general a number like 38367
(for nov 26, 2004).

i'm wondering if someone has played with the default workbook that excel
starts with - i've not develed too much into this area, but i believe that
if you create a workbook called book.xlt and save it in the XL Start folder
(generally found somewhere like C:\Program Files\Microsoft
Office\Office11\XLStart) then excel will use that when it starts. If
someone has formatted this to text then i believe this will explain the
behaviour you are seeing.

Cheers
JulieD
 
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