Date in cell shows as pound signs

[JGLois]

Using Excel 2000. I have pre-formated worksheets in which the date columns
are
formatted to show the date style as 12-Nov-03. All worked fine until
yesterday when
the entries began to show up as pound signs. When I look at the formatting
for the cell,
it appears to be formatted correctly. I have checked with entries entered
before yesterday
and the formatting appears the same.

My knowledge of the program is fairly rudimentary but I thought I could do
the basic
cell formatting by clicking Format, Cells, Number, Catagory - Date, etc.

What am I missing here?

Most grateful for your help.

Lois

 

[David]

Lois

The reason is thatyour column is too narrow to display the new date. Simply
increase the column width and the ###### will disappear and show the correct
string.

If you do not want to worry about varying text width as the actual text
changes, instead of a proportional font use a fixed width font like Courier.
Then once you have found the width to display one string of a given number
of characters it will be OK for any string with that number of characters.

Regards

David

 

[David McRitchie]

Hi Lois,
or you subtracted dates and ended up with a negative date. If you
look in Excel HELP index, #
you will find the # right near the top of the Excel HELP index.

If you changed your regional settings in the control panel to format
dates differently such as to show a four digit year your dates would
automatically require a wider column. If your format matches your
regional setting then no format is saved it is just marked internally
as being a date.

 

[JGLois]

Thank you David. It was as simple as increasing the column width. I would
have
never figured it out.

Much appreciation,
Lois