Patrice Calve

# re: Disable Date "Autocorrect" in MS Excel 2003

It's a pain... I've been searching for something similar - entering fractions and numbers with dashes - and it appears that if the autocorrect dialog in the Tools menu doesn't have the option to switch it off (apparently present in some versions, but not in mine), then you're limited to typing prefixes.

For fractions, you can use a 0 in front (so 0 1/7 will end up with a 1/7 in the box); for any number that you don't want converted (as in your case) put a single quote before you type it in; so e.g. enter '4.2.1 in the box.

It's a pain, but at least it's a start.
Hope that helps!

# re: Disable Date "Autocorrect" in MS Excel 2003

Oops, forgot to say that the quote is a special call to Excel and doesn't actually appear in the box!

# re: Disable Date "Autocorrect" in MS Excel 2003

just click on extras / options / international / number handling /
uncheck "use system separators", change
decimal separators to "." (without quotation marks) and the Thousands separator to " " for example. After importing the data, just replace all "." to "," so that also other excel user get the right contents displayed. And you can switch back using system separators.

# re: Disable Date "Autocorrect" in MS Excel 2003

In Office 2000, format the cells as Text under the "Format Cells" option

# re: Disable Date "Autocorrect" in MS Excel 2003

"In Office 2000, format the cells as Text under the "Format Cells" option"

This doesn't work if you've pasted the cells in.

# re: Disable Date "Autocorrect" in MS Excel 2003

"just click on extras / options / international / number handling / "

There is no "extras" menu option in Excel 2003

# re: Disable Date "Autocorrect" in MS Excel 2003

It's under tools, not "extras." But this still doesn't seem to fix that problem.

# re: Disable Date "Autocorrect" in MS Excel 2003

Just put single ' right before you enter the number.

# re: Disable Date "Autocorrect" in MS Excel 2003

"Just put single ' right before you enter the number."

I've seen this "solution" too many times on these forums. This doesn't work if you're pasting cells (see Andy's comment above) or if you're opening a .csv file generated by another program. I have a .csv file that was generated by a flow cytometry program that I'm trying to open with case numbers and it's converting my case numbers (ie Case # 09-55) to dates (Sept 1995). There should be a way to turn the feature off. It's a HUGE annoyance.

I'm just a little frustrated (grr!)

# disable/stop autocorrection/autocorrecting dates

FORMAT, CELL, NUMBER; check field CUSTOM and for TYPE select STANDARD.

Good luck!

# re: Disable Date "Autocorrect" in MS Excel 2003

I dont know about Excell 2000 but in 2003 this works:

Save a copy of your .csv file changing the extension of your file from .csv to .txt

open excel.

go to DATA --> Import external data --> Import data --> browse to find the .txt file you made earlier

The text import wizard should open.

Click on delimited, click next
click comma, click next

You should now see all columns appear with heading GENERAL --> highlight the columns with the values that are changing to date and click TEXT (top right) instead. The heading of these columns should now change to TEXT.

click finish

Excel will now treat the column as text when it imports the data and will not change them to dates

# re: Disable Date "Autocorrect" in MS Excel 2003

This above comment did the trick, it worked as required for my data, I didn't even have to save as txt.
thx.

# re: Disable Date "Autocorrect" in MS Excel 2003

I JUST HIGHLIGHT SAID CELLS AND "FORMAT" THEN "NUMBER" THEN CLASSIFY IT AS "TEXT" IT WILL SAY "TEXT FORMAT CELLS ARE TREATED AS TEXT EVEN WHEN A NUMBER IS IN THE CELL. THE CELL IS DISPLAYED EXACTLY AS ENTERED."

THANKS FOR THE HELP, THIS WAS SERIOUSLY GETTING UNDER MY SKIN

# re: Disable Date "Autocorrect" in MS Excel 2003

Thanks Tim, this worked for me too!

# re: Disable Date "Autocorrect" in MS Excel 2003

I hate excel

# re: Disable Date "Autocorrect" in MS Excel 2003

Tim,

I just wanted to say I've been scouring for months for an answer to this idiotic problem and your idea about converting from .xls to .txt then importing the data worked wonders. God bless you!

Thanks again!
Michelle

# re: Disable Date "Autocorrect" in MS Excel 2003

This "nice" option only makes Excel even more worse. Can someone please post and answer as how can this be disabled. It is becoming really anoyng when you have to enter 100 cells with numbers such as 2.3 or 1-5 ...

# re: Disable Date "Autocorrect" in MS Excel 2003

Right click on the cell go to format and on the number tab select
"general" and close this will solve the issue.

or simply enter an apostrophe (') and then go ahead with the data
typing.

(ok this is a 6 years ago post i know :P, but hopefully it may be helpful to people looking this page from now on)