Date as string

Z

zorglub76

I am using Mac version of Excel (Office 2004), but it probably shouldn'
matter.. The problem is:

I have a table with 10 columns. One of these columns is "Time" (th
time of some events). Some of the cells is contain values like "20:00"
and some are like "20:00/22:00" (event's beginning and ending time)
Excel has automatically formatted the "20:00" type of cells as "time
and "20:00/22:00" type of cells as "text".

I want ALL the cells to be formatted as text.
How?

If I change the format of the single cell to text, cell "20:00" i
displayed as "0.833333" (which is equivalent of dividing 20 with 24)
I'd preffer not to use some function which would go from cell to cell
check if it's formatted as "time" and then transform it with some othe
function to "string"..
 
D

Dave Peterson

Maybe you can use an extra column and use a formula like:
=TEXT(A1,"hh:mm")
and drag down.

Select that column and
edit|copy
edit|paste special|values

And delete the original column.
 
Z

zorglub76

Thanx.

The "TEXT(A1,"hh:mm")" thing works. It's still much more complicate
than my vision of transforming whatever to string, but it's fairl
simple (keeping in mind that we're talking about MS product).

Paste special doesn't do the job though (I've already tried it before)
It again does that additional transformation: time -> value (i.e
"time/24") -> text. Which means that "20:00" will be displayed a
"0.83333
 
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Dave Peterson

When I've used that =text() formula and then copy|paste special, the values
remain text. They are not converted to numbers.

I can do something else to those cells to convert them back to numeric values
(formatted as general or time).

What else are you doing?
 
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zorglub76

It seems that I didn't understand you well. I thought that you've
mentioned copy->paste special as a possibillity for solving the
formatting problem. I don't need that pasting AFTER creating the new
column. I just make the new column with the converted values and simply
forget the original column, since I don't need it anymore.

I needed all that in order to prepare data for creating a Quark
document. I am just experimenting with that (for now..). Yesterday I
opened Quark dictionary for the first time and found out how doomed I
was for not being just some quantum phisician, or brain surgent. I
prefer doing easier work than understanding Quark dictionary....
 
D

Dave Peterson

I suggested copy|paste special|values so that you could delete the original
column--not just hide it (or forget it).
 
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