How to enter date as text

[Orrie]

Hi,

[Newbie question.]
I maintain a list of new members of a club in an Excel 2003 spreadsheet I
got from a past membership officer. The list, which was started in 2007
simply used the name of the month in Column A. However, when I wrote
"January 2008" in order to list this year's new members, Excel changed the
format to Jan-08. When I tried to enter "January 08," Excel changed the
entry to a series of numbers I did not recognize as related to "January 08."

The date entries are only intended as separators to show in which month the
new members joined. The date is not used in any calculations.

How can a write January 2008 and have Excel see it as plain text?

Thank you.

Orrie

 

[John Bundy]

The easy way is to just put a ' in front of it

 

[Tyro]

You would probably be better off to enter your dates as dates and just
format them the way you want to see them. January 2008 displays as Jan-08.
It is stored in Excel as 39448 as dates are just numbers to Excel. You could
then custom format your display of the date as "mmmm yyyy" which will
display as January 2008.
With true dates, you'll be able to sort by date and display the dates as you
wish

Tyro

 

[Sandy Mann]

Format the Column as custom format:

mmmm yy

the you can enter a date as 1/1/08 - less typing!

--
HTH

Sandy
In Perth, the ancient capital of Scotland
and the crowning place of kings

(e-mail address removed)
Replace @mailinator.com with @tiscali.co.uk

 

[Gord Dibben]

The "series of numbers" is the serial number of the the date.

January 2008 serial number is 39455 which is 39455 days since

December 31, 1899 or January 0, 1900

For more on how Excel stores dates see Chip Pearson's site.

http://www.cpearson.com/excel/datetime.htm#SerialDates


Gord Dibben MS Excel MVP

 

[Orrie]

Thank you.

If I change the date format in Excel, won't that change the date format in
all my Office applications? That's how I interperet the article in the Excel
Help file. Or can I just enter the format using Excel's Format Cells?

Orrie

 

[Sandy Mann]

If I change the date format in Excel, won't that change the date format in

all my Office applications?

If you were replying to me then I intended that you highlight just that one
Column and custom format only htose cells.

--
HTH

Sandy
In Perth, the ancient capital of Scotland
and the crowning place of kings

(e-mail address removed)
Replace @mailinator.com with @tiscali.co.uk

Thank you.

If I change the date format in Excel, won't that change the date format in
all my Office applications? That's how I interperet the article in the
Excel Help file. Or can I just enter the format using Excel's Format
Cells?

Orrie

Hi,

[Newbie question.]
I maintain a list of new members of a club in an Excel 2003 spreadsheet I
got from a past membership officer. The list, which was started in 2007
simply used the name of the month in Column A. However, when I wrote
"January 2008" in order to list this year's new members, Excel changed
the format to Jan-08. When I tried to enter "January 08," Excel changed
the entry to a series of numbers I did not recognize as related to
"January 08."

The date entries are only intended as separators to show in which month
the new members joined. The date is not used in any calculations.

How can a write January 2008 and have Excel see it as plain text?

Thank you.

Orrie