Excel Changes Dates into Numbers Automatically

Question

Everytime I enter a date into a cell (e.g. 11/6/1989), Excel keeps changing it into a five or six digit number. How can I get it to stop doing this?

Your cell is formatted as general or number, Change the format to short date. — Scott Craner, Dec 19 '16 at 14:42

FoxMcloud5655 · Answer 1 · 2016-12-19T20:11:12.403

0

The cell that you are trying to enter the date into is formatted wrong. It depends on your version of Excel, but for the latest as of this writing (Excel 2016), you can change the cell's format to "Date" by following these steps:

Right click the cell.
Click "Format Cells..."
In the box labeled "Category", click the "Date" field.
Hit the "OK" button.

If this does not work for you, you can force Excel to display the date verbatim by adding an apostrophe (the ' character) before your data (like '11/6/1989).

edited Dec 19 '16 at 20:11

answered Dec 19 '16 at 14:59

FoxMcloud5655

151
10

I already tried that and its not working. – waterclerk Dec 19 '16 at 15:00
What version of Excel are you using? – FoxMcloud5655 Dec 19 '16 at 15:01
I am using excel 2010 – waterclerk Dec 19 '16 at 15:29
Check my answer again for an alternate option. – FoxMcloud5655 Dec 19 '16 at 20:11

Excel Changes Dates into Numbers Automatically

1 Answers1