entered date and time

trickyjw

New Member
Joined
Jan 24, 2005
Messages
3
IN excel if I enter a date it automatically makes it a date/time format...how can I get it to remain as normal text and still enter it in a date/time format and not convert to a date automatically as I want to export it for a database as normal text and not to be in a formatted (date/time) cell.
 

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If you want a cell to stay Text, before entering the data, select the cell(s) and go to Format->Cells, select the Number tab, select Text from the list and click OK. This way, however you enter the data, it will stay the same (as text).
 
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yes this does work but my problem is that I already have all the data entered with a list of about 1000 dates down a column.....and I need to change all of them to appear as text and not a date. Copy and pasting into a formatted column set to text does not work either.
 
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Hi,

you could try a formula like this:

=TEXT(A1,"YYYY-MM-DD hh:ss")

(adjust the date format)
 
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