when I type in 11 - 29 into a cell in microsoft excel and press enter it changes to Nov-29 why? please help:)?

Question

thanks for tryin to answer this question but non of them were right i used text format instead of number and it work fine

Answer 1

The format is set as date. Change the format. It is automatically set, so that when you input the data, it thinks its a date

Go to format -> cell -> number format

Answer 2

That's because you did not tell them what the 11 - 29 represented. As most mentioned, Excel thinks it's a date. This will still happen even if you put a space before and after the dash.

If you want to do math with these in a formula, then =11-29 will work, also as suggested.

If you were referring to a page number in a textbook, for instance Chapter 11, Page 29 - then this is not a number and as you have now found out, you change the format to text. This should be done first to avoid the serial representation of the date from being displayed, also as mentioned.

So obviously you found the answer from reading all the posts and doing some poking around.

No one gave you a solution because you did not provide enough information - which is often the case here. And also, you asked why Excel does this, not necessarily what to do to correct it. Bad on you.

Answer 3

Formulas in Excel and most other spreadsheets have to start with =. Some accept + or - as the first character.
Excel looks at several formats, including 11/07 and 11-7 as dates (the only commonly accepted international date format is 2007-08-31 (YYYY-MM-DD) since every other one has a duplicate with the day and month reversed.
If you follow the directions of those who said to use format, you will end up with a number like 32455 which is the number of days from the start of the 20th century that corresponds to the date shown.

Answer 4

If you don't tell Excel what you're entering, it'll try and guess what it is. 11-29 looks like a date rather than an equation, so it makes it a date.

Enter the value as =11-29 and it'll know it's an equation and calculate it correctly.

Answer 5

You need to go into the cell data and change the format. Click format, cell and then under the number tab there will be a list - select the type you want.

Answer 6

11-29 looks like a date rather than an equation

Answer 7

This is becuse 11 is the month Novemeber and 29th is the day. So what you need to do is not put a dash but probably space them out.

Answer 8

It's set to dates. If you go to "format" and click on cells, it should give you a options from date through to currency.

Answer 9

right click on the cell, or column or row, and format cell, change to numeric. you are in general or date format.

Answer 10

you have to change cell properties or you can write 11_29