

- #Stop numbers from turning to dates in excel for mac serial numbers
- #Stop numbers from turning to dates in excel for mac serial number
You may also click the tiny arrow in the bottom right corner of this group, and the Format Cells window opens. From the Home tab’s Number group, select a number format from the General drop-down list. Now, all you have to do is format the cells to whichever date format you prefer.

#Stop numbers from turning to dates in excel for mac serial number
Just click the text-date in cell A3, and the Excel serial number appears in cell B5. You do not have to re-enter the date in the Date_text field box. From the Formulas tab, select Date & Time > DATEVALUE. NOTE: When dates are copied or imported into Excel as text fields (from an ASCII file, database, or even a text file), the system automatically reads them as text however, if you copy a date from MS Word (using copy/paste/text), Excel recognizes it as a date. Insert an apostrophe before each date, and that will convert the date to a text entry. To test this function, enter five dates-as text-in cells A5 through A9. When this happens, use the DATEVALUE function to convert the text dates to Excel serial numbers. Importing dates is a better option but, sometimes, even imported dates come in as text. When dates are copied into Excel, they’re often copied as text. JD Sartain Convert text dates to actual dates
#Stop numbers from turning to dates in excel for mac serial numbers
Excel calls them serial numbers and uses them to calculate dates and times. These are the numeric equivalents of the first five days in May of 2016. Notice that your five dates have changed to the following numbers: 42491 through 42495. Highlight the range then from the Home tab’s Number group, select General from the drop-down list.

Now enter the dates in cells B3 through B7 for the first five days in May through. Notice that your numbers 1 through 5 have changed to the following dates: through. Highlight the range, then from the Home tab’s Number group, select Short Date from the drop-down list. Open Excel and enter the numbers 1 through 5 in cells A3 through A7. Not to be confused with Julian dates, which mainframes and many programming languages use, Excel serial numbers are unique to Microsoft products. Every date (month, day, year) and time (hour, minute, and second) has an equivalent Serial Number dating back to Januat 00:00:00 (hours, minutes, seconds). If you need to calculate dates in your spreadsheets, Excel uses its own unique system, which it calls Serial Numbers.
