Force Cell format as General when entering in a date.

**Miskondukt** · 12-03-2015, 03:20 PM

Lo again all,

I have a little annoyance that I can't seem to solve. What I am trying to do is enter a date in a cell and have it not format as a date but as a general number. I have set the cell in question to "General" but when I type in a date the cell changes to a short-date number format.

Ideas?

Thanks gents

**newdoverman** · 12-03-2015, 03:25 PM

Excel is trying to help you out

I have not come across a method to defeat this automatic formatting.

**MrShorty** · 12-03-2015, 03:46 PM

I, too, see this kind of behavior and have not found a good solution to prevent Excel from auto-formatting cells formatted as "general".

One could certainly code a "change event" that would undo the number format, but that seems like more work that it is worth.

The real problem with your desired outcome is leaving the cells formatted as "general", since a number format of "general" is code for "if Excel has a better idea for number format, use it." What format would you like to see? If you are entering dates (no times), then format code of "0" (round to the nearest integer) should display any dates entered as integers. If time is also part of the entry, then simply include the desired number of decimal places you would like to see ("0.###" for example).