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How to disable auto date format when opening a file

asked 2012-07-21 00:51:51 +0200

henry gravatar image henry
11 3

updated 2012-07-21 00:55:19 +0200

When I open the file I need to work on, LO Calc 3.3.4 automatically interprets some cells as date and changes their values. For example the cell content '4-6' gets converted to '06-Apr'. If I then change its format to text it becomes '41005'. I tried different options, Expand Formatting,language separator, etc without any luck. I can't put a ' in front of the content because by the time I can edit the file is already changed. How can I get LO to respect the value '4-6' as is?

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File is xlsx

henry ( 2012-07-21 02:57:45 +0200 )edit

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answered 2013-03-14 00:14:19 +0200

Mark12547 gravatar image Mark12547 flag of United States
140 7

A trick I have used in Excel and I suspect would also work in Calc is to select the cell (or, in my case, highlight the whole column by clicking on the column heading), and then going into "Format" -> "Format Cells" (or Ctl+1 which is CTL + the digit 1), scrolling down the "Category" column, and clicking on text. That way, what is entered in that cell is interpreted as text, not as a date, not as a number, but as text.

Of course, this requires that the file would then subsequently be saved with the cell formatted as a category of "Text".

If this doesn't help, please explain in more detail what you are doing. Are you opening a non-LibreOffice file and allowing it to convert, or opening a .CSV file (and does it include quotes around the text of text columns?), or are you doing something else?

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answered 2013-03-13 10:30:47 +0200

qubit gravatar image qubit flag of United States
5816 3 50 43

Hi @henry,

Still looking for an answer here?

You mentioned using LO 3.3.4. We've now released LO 4.0 -- could you try with the latest release and let us know if you're still experiencing the same problems?

Thanks!

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answered 2012-07-21 01:48:43 +0200

mariosv gravatar image mariosv flag of Spain
5039 23 51

What kind of file are you opening?. It is a native .ods file?

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Asked: 2012-07-21 00:51:51 +0200

Seen: 248 times

Last updated: Mar 14