Help please - "General" format for cells.

[Brit_Raider]

Hi - help please! (BTW - Excel 2002 being used - yes I'm still in the
stone-age <g>).

I have a column of cells that I want to hold 3 numbers in the format
xx-xx-xx (i.e three, one or two digit, numbers separated by hyphens).
BUT - even if I set the cell formatting to "general", the moment I enter
something that *could* be construed as a date - e.g. 7-3-3, the cell swaps
to date format and formats it as 7/3/03.
Even if I go back to the cell and change it back to "general" it makes no
difference.

How the hell do I stop this happening??

 

[Dave Peterson]

Preformat your cells as Text.
Then do your data entry.

Or prefix your entry with an apostrophe:
'1-2-3

 

[JE McGimpsey]

Prefix the entry with an apostrophe ('), or set the cell format to Text
before entry.

 

[Ragdyer]

Either prefix each entry with an apostrophe ( ' ), which is *not* visible in
the cell, but is displayed in the formula bar,
OR
*Preformat* the cell(s) as TEXT *before* data entry.

BTW, I'm now on an XL97 machine, so don't talk about that *new* XL02 version
of yours.<bg>

 

[Bill Kuunders]

Format the column as text and right aligned if you like.

 

[Brit_Raider]

Thanks to all who replied - Bill, Ragdyer, JE & Dave - it's now sorted!!

Many thanks.