date format issues

Hi,

I have made no changes to the formatting of the cells in the worksheet, so it is set to general.

If a user accidentally types something like 1-2 in a cell (or if they forget and type "one-half" as 1/2 instead of 0.5), it changes the format to date. Even after deleting 1-2, all future entries in that cell are treated as a date, so 10 becomes 10-Jan and negative numbers become ****.

My question is: is there a way of stopping excel from "permanently" changing the format of the cell from general to date, just because I typed 1-2 or something similar.

Cheers
free

The problem with formatting cells as text etc. before entering data is that now it is not possible to use simple functions such as sum on the data. Formatting as fractions doesn't solve the problem as if you enter 1-2, it "permanently" changes the cell format from fractions to date, just as if it had originally been formatted as general.

Is there a way of telling excel that the value you enter in a cell will NEVER be a date?

Thanks
free