Date Entered,Only Number Symbols Appear

[Guest]

I created an hours sheet and about a week after creating it I needed to add another day. When I type in 7/31/04 and hit enter what appears is ######. What is happening?
Thanks Mike.

 

[Ron Rosenfeld]

I created an hours sheet and about a week after creating it I needed to add another day. When I type in 7/31/04 and hit enter what appears is ######. What is happening?
Thanks Mike.

Maybe the column is too narrow?


--ron

 

[Norman Harker]

Hi Mike!

Sounds like the column width isn't wide enough to display the date in
the format you have chosen:

Here's some tips:

It's annoying to find that the column widths that were OK become to
narrow for dates and display the potentially confusing ######. If you
establish the widest column requirement you can set all column widths
to that size. You can use a mono-space font but most of us prefer the
proportional space ones like Arial and Time New Roman. For this
purpose the following points on relative widths are useful:

Wednesday is the longest day (and here's you thinking it was Monday!)

September is the longest month (unless you're on holiday!)

Wed is still the longest day in abbreviated form of day
..
May is the longest month in abbreviated form of month.

The numbers are not of equal width. The numbers 28 and 08 are ever so
slightly wider that the rest.

Note that these tips may not help you avoid too narrow column widths
if you reduce the zoom percentage or change font or font size or
format bold after setting the column widths. Also, the above guides
only apply to English language names of days and months.

 

[Guest]

I am puzzled because this entry is the same as the 60 before it and they allappeared like this: if I typed in 7/3/2004 when I hit entered the cell showed 3-Jul. This late change to ad one more day is the only instance I get the number symbols.

 

[Ragdyer]

I haven't been able to decipher from your post as to whether or not these
cells displaying the # signs contain any type of formulas.

This might be important because, if your cells *are wide* enough, another
reason for this type of display is *negative* dates.

XL does not display negative dates, so perhaps you might check out all your
formulas to make sure they are returning dates that are *not* negative.

See what happens if you have
12/31/03
in A1,
And
1/1/04
in B1,
And in C1 this formula,
=A1-B1
--
HTH,

RD

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I am puzzled because this entry is the same as the 60 before it and they

allappeared like this: if I typed in 7/3/2004 when I hit entered the cell
showed 3-Jul. This late change to ad one more day is the only instance I get
the number symbols.add another day. When I type in 7/31/04 and hit enter what appears is
######. What is happening?

 

[Guest]

The entry was too wide for the cell. I right clicked on the cell, opened format cell and the date was being written out ,eg. July 3, 2004. All the previous cells were
Jul-3. The full dte is too wide for the cell. I changed the format and now the number symbols are gone and the date appears.
Thanks all, Mike.

 

[Guest]

The entry was too wide for the cell. I right clicked on the cell, opened format cell and the date was being written out ,eg. July 3, 2004. All the previous cells were
Jul-3. The full dte is too wide for the cell. I changed the format and now the number symbols are gone and the date appears.
Thanks all, Mike.

 

[Guest]

The entry was too wide for the cell. I right clicked on the cell, opened format cell and the date was being written out ,eg. July 3, 2004. All the previous cells were
Jul-3. The full date is too wide for the cell. I changed the format and now the number symbols are gone and the date appears.
Thanks all, Mike.

 

[Ron Rosenfeld]

I am puzzled because this entry is the same as the 60 before it and they allappeared like this: if I typed in 7/3/2004 when I hit entered the cell showed 3-Jul. This late change to ad one more day is the only instance I get the number symbols.

How did it appear when you widened the column?

--ron