Excel displays serial dates, can't change

  • Thread starter Thread starter mahalie
  • Start date Start date
M

mahalie

We have a workbook that's been used for a long time with no poblems.
It references some other documents on the network for its formulas.
Someone opened it today and now it all the dates are displayed at
serial numbers. No amount of manual formatting seems to return them to
human readable dates.

Could this be related to going back and forth between versions of
Excel? It's also possible someone took this home (off the network) on
their laptop.

Any ideas/input appreciated. I'm not a frequent Excel user, and I have
no idea where to go with this one...
 
Just taking a copy of the file home on a notebook should not alter the
existing copy on the network, unless they came back and saved their altered
copy back to the network.......then it could be anything.

What it looks to me lik might have happened, is that those date cells may
have somehow picked up a leading space in their cells. That would cause them
not to reformat. You can download the "CellView" Add-in from Chip Pearson's
site www.cpearson.com and it will show you exactly what visible and
non-visible characters are in the cell.......or to test, you might just hand
type over one of the offending cells with a number just to check.....or try
this in a helper cell......

=TRIM(A7)*1

hth
Vaya con Dios,
Chuck, CABGx3
 
Maybe you're looking at formulas.

Tools|options|view tab|uncheck formulas.

There's a shortcut key that toggles this setting that may have been hit in
error.

Ctrl-` (ctrl-backquote, the key to the left of the 1/! on my USA keyboard)
 
Man-o-man, EVERYDAY I learn something new..........thanks for posting that
Dave.

Vaya con Dios,
Chuck, CABGx3
 
Thanks for the advice, our admin staff have used your suggestions
several times in the last week already. The sent me an email yestday
that says "We love Dave!"...though you should know!
 
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