Dates as Serial Values

L

Lucy N

Whilst working all my dates have started to show up as their serial values. I
tried to change the format back but it won't work. Can anyone help?
 
D

David Biddulph

Lucy N said:
Whilst working all my dates have started to show up as their serial
values. I
tried to change the format back but it won't work. Can anyone help?
Click to expand...

What format are the cells currently?

Are you sure that you've got numbers in there, rather than text? [If you
change the number of figures after the decimal point in Number format, does
this change show up in the cells? If not, then you may need to do a Paste
Special trick like adding zero or multiplying by 1 to convert from text to
number, and then you should be able to format cells as date.]
 
L

Lucy N

Thanks for replyin.

The Format says number and date still.

The data is the date with slashes in between e.g. 06/07/2006

My colleague told me in needed to put a ' in front of everything to get it
to convert back but I was hoping there was something simpler.
 
D

Dave Peterson

Do you see the real date in the formulabar, but those serial numbers in the
cell?

If yes, try
tools|options|view|uncheck formulas

You may have hit the shortcut toggle in error:
ctrl-` (ctrl-backquote, to the left of the 1/! on my USA keyboard)
 
R

RagDyeR

Check to see if you are perhaps in "Formula View" mode.
This would change "legal" XL dates to their serial values.

You can toggle it on and off with:
<Ctrl> < ` >
That's the key containing the ~ (on my keyboard).

--

HTH,

RD
=====================================================
Please keep all correspondence within the Group, so all may benefit!
=====================================================

Thanks for replyin.

The Format says number and date still.

The data is the date with slashes in between e.g. 06/07/2006

My colleague told me in needed to put a ' in front of everything to get it
to convert back but I was hoping there was something simpler.
 
L

Lucy N

That is obviously what I'd done, thankyou so much, I'm working to a deadline
and thought I'd never get it sorted.

Thanks again
 
D

David Biddulph

Lucy N said:
Thanks for replyin.

The Format says number and date still.
Click to expand...

Is the format Number or is it Date? These are two different formats; it
can't be both.
The data is the date with slashes in between e.g. 06/07/2006
Click to expand...

I thought you were saying that you were seeing the data as numbers, not as
dates? Or are you saying that you see the date in the formula bar but the
serial number when you see the cell in the sheet (or vice versa)?
My colleague told me in needed to put a ' in front of everything to get it
to convert back but I was hoping there was something simpler.
Click to expand...

Putting a ' in front will force it to be treated as text, which isn't what
you want.
 
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