Ok, this is driving me absolutely crazy. Any time I try to enter data in a cell with a format of, say, 7-8 (as in “7 to 8”), it keeps changing it to a date! How can I disable this permanently, forever, finito?
If I understand the question, DV88 wants to see the string “7-8” in the cell. That’s easy, with 3.5.4:
a) Format cells where you want to see strings as “Text” before you start your inputs.
b) If you only need that for 1 particular cell, start Input with single quote
In 3.6 the auto date recognition will be more restrictive, there (at least with my parallel installation of Master “LOdev 3.6.0alpha0+ – WIN7 Home Premium (64bit) ENGLISH UI [Build ID: 7175cee]” (tinderbox: Win-x86@6-fast, pull time 2012-05-16 22:07:37) “7-8” will not be recognized as date.
That’s good to hear about 3.6. Text formatting works, but I’m using calculations in some cells and things like that in others, so having to do it for every cell is a chore and I can’t just set the whole document to it. -_-
I think the easy way is to put a + or = at the beginning.
+7-8 or =7-8
I do not believe that that matches with reporter’s needs, I understand his question how to get string “7-8” into the cell, not calculation result “-1”
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Enter '7-8. This is same as Excel.
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Before enter the string, set the data format as string in the range.
rightclick on the cell → Cell format → tab [Numbers] → choose a preferred format!
Does not work for me. I have explicitly used the format “Numbers → General”, but when I enter 1/3, it is interpreted as a date, and not as one third.
This automatic date format drives me crazy too. With such a nice long list of possible date formats libreoffice programmers could have easily included “none”. If they are going to copy excel they should not include annoyance factors like this. I’m sure there is someone somewhere who wants all their dates arranged for them but I haven’t ever met anyone like that.
I’m not happy to have to start every date cell on every spreadsheet with a single quotation mark. Can anyone recommend a spreadsheet program where date formats can be disabled? Many thanks.
Glad to find a comrade. Down with all silly smart features! Alas! Calc having abolished one of the internal date accepance patterns there wolud be a crowd of loudly crying and bitterly weeping users, I think. they surely will insist on their saving some seconds every other day by automatisms they’re accquainted to, and won’t worry about the hours others are spending on the fight against the implications. Let’s hope “none” will stay excluded. (Did you visit Language settings for this?)