derosa@motcid.UUCP (John DeRosa) (04/18/91)
I would like to be able to enter a date string of April 24, 1991 into an Excel cell. Unfortunately, Excel keeps converting it to another format. It either converts it to a number of days since 1904 (general) or to another date format like dd-mm-yy. The closest that I have come to what I want is either; 1) Put the date in quotes, but the quotes show. 2) Format the date mmmm dd, yyyy. This works for months with four letters but truncates November to Nove, etc. Is there a more generic form of this? Any ideas? -- = John DeRosa, Motorola, Inc, Cellular Infrastructure Group = = e-mail: ...uunet!motcid!derosaj, motcid!derosaj@uunet.uu.net = = Applelink: N1111 = =I do not hold by employer responsible for any information in this message =
derosa@motcid.UUCP (John DeRosa) (04/23/91)
derosa@motcid.UUCP (John DeRosa) writes: >I would like to be able to enter a date >string of April 24, 1991 into an Excel >cell. Unfortunately, Excel keeps converting >it to another format. Well, the adage RTFM comes to mind. Several people told me that formatting dates is no quite intuitive, so after reading the manual I came up with this simple chart of formatting possibilities. If the input string is December 1, 1991 then; Format Results ====== ======= m d, yyyy 12 1, 1991 mm d, yyyy 12 1, 1991 mmm d, yyyy Dec 1, 1991 mmm dd, yyyy Dec 01, 1991 mmmm d, yyyy December 1, 1991 mmmm dd, yyyy December 01, 1991 mmmm ddd, yyyy December Sun, 1991 mmmm dddd, yyyy December Sunday, 1991 mmmmm d, yyyy December12 1, 1991 The ultimate format might be; dddd, mmmm d, yyyy Sunday, December 1, 1991 It seems a bit odd that the month "May" formated with four m's, mmmm, would still produce "May", not "May " but this is Microsoft. This leads to my real question, how do you format a cell so that *ANY* information entered into a cell is not altered in any way? -- = John DeRosa, Motorola, Inc, Cellular Infrastructure Group = = e-mail: ...uunet!motcid!derosaj, motcid!derosaj@uunet.uu.net = = Applelink: N1111 = =I do not hold by employer responsible for any information in this message =
vanover@bcsaic.UUCP (Jann VanOver) (04/23/91)
In article <6240@crystal9.UUCP> derosa@motcid.UUCP (John DeRosa) writes: >derosa@motcid.UUCP (John DeRosa) writes: > >>I would like to be able to enter a date >>string of April 24, 1991 into an Excel >>cell. Unfortunately, Excel keeps converting >>it to another format. > >This leads to my real question, how do you >format a cell so that *ANY* information >entered into a cell is not altered in any >way? >-- Yes, John. I think your original posting was close: ="April 24, 1991" ^ The equals sign is crucial. It says "what follows is a formula that needs to be evaluated". Your "formula" is the string between the quotes. This will give you the string you want without it being recognized (turned into) a date! Have fun! Jann E VanOver vanover@atc.boeing.com