new worksheet formatting is DATE

[Lawrence]

Hi

Everytimes when insert the new worksheet, the default formatting for all
entire worksheet is DATE instead of GENERAL. Can anyone help on that?

Lawrence

 

[Dave Peterson]

Try this to test first.

Start a new workbook.
In xl2003 menus:
Format|Style
look at the normal style
Is it General or some sort of Date.

If it's a date format, then look in your XLStart folder for a workbook named
book.xlt (it's the template file that excel can use when creating a new
workbook).

You can either delete that file (if there's nothing else you want to save in
that template) or you can open it (not use it to create a new workbook).

Then change this Normal style and resave it as book.xlt in your XLStart folder.

Close excel and restart.

Start a new workbook to test.

Be aware that any existing workbook won't be affected by this change. You'll
have to change the Normal style in each workbook. (Styles live in
workbooks--they're not application settings.)

=====
Some notes...

The location of this XLStart folder for me is:
C:\Documents and Settings\(username)\Application Data\Microsoft\Excel\XLSTART
(xl2003 under winxp home)

I can get to that location quickly by:
Windows start button|Run
type:
%appdata%
and drilling down through Microsoft, then excel, then XLStart

But depending on your upgrade path, you may have multiple XLStart folders. If
you can't find book.xlt (or XLStart) using windows start button|search, you
could try:

Windows Start button|Run
type:
CMD
(to get to the Command prompt)

C:
(to get to the C: drive--change this to the drive that excel is installed on)

cd\
(to get to the root directory)

dir book.xlt /s

The /s says to search subfolders, too.

Make a note of the locations of the found files.