why does dividing numbers give me dates and not numbers?

[Guest]

Hello,
I am making a frequency table that includes frequency, frequency %, and cum
frequency, but I cannot accuarately input the data in the frequency % column.
The total frequency I have is 65, and for the first bin, there is a
frequency of 4. So when I either input =4/65, 4/65, or E3=E9 (the boxes the
bin frequency is in, and the total number) it does not give me a number, but
instead gives me the date, April 1, 1965, or january 00 if i use the = key.
And even if i do the division on a calculator, and then input 0.06 it will
give me Jan - 00 as an answer. whats up?

 

[Bernard Liengme]

What's up is the cell has been formatted for dates.
If you take a nice clean worksheet and type = 4/65 in the cell it will
display 0.061538
But if in another cell you type 4/6 you will get a data (I get 4-June, I
used Canadian date format)
Now if I type in that cell =4/65 I get April 65 because the cell was
preformatted for dates.
But if I delete the content of the cell and format it General then next time
I type =4/65 all is well
One of Excel's attempts to be helpful - remembering that a cell once held a
date!!!
best wishes