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  1.  Home
  2. PCTECH
  3. July 2009

Re: Excel 2007 numeric converted to date format

IMNSHO, it's not so much as Excel being "over-helpful" as it is that
Microsoft knows much better than you what the data is supposed to
represent. Don't like what Microsoft has decided it should be? Tough....
you know. Eventually you'll figure out how to override the "wisdom of
Redmond", but any notion of a user-intuitive application should be thrown
out the Window. (Pun not originally intended, but now that I see it... <g>)

Just my 2¢.
- Dan

On Mon, Jul 27, 2009 at 12:29 AM, Norm Dennis <nhdennis@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I have taken an old .xls file and converted it to .xlsx and it saves with
format "general".

I opened and saved the document a number of times without getting the issue
of the format changing to date format.

My original document was worked with in the same way but I have noticed
that
the format of numeric defined columns have changed to date format on
occasions.

Just wondering if because the columns have multiple text headings, that may
be causing the problem.
As Vern has mentioned, excel trying to be over-helpful.


Norm Dennis

-----Original Message-----
From: pctech-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:pctech-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Jim Franz
Sent: Monday, 27 July 2009 12:29 AM
To: PC Technical Discussion for iSeries Users
Subject: Re: [PCTECH] Excel 2007 numeric converted to date format

see if in the conversion the format changed to "General".
That's ms-speak for let us guess the format.
Jim
----- Original Message -----
From: "Norm Dennis" <nhdennis@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "'PC Technical Discussion for iSeries Users'" <pctech@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, July 26, 2009 12:25 PM
Subject: Re: [PCTECH] Excel 2007 numeric converted to date format


Hi Vern,
The excel workbook is one that I have maintained for a while.
It has some columns defined as dates and some as financial amounts.

A few months ago I converted from excel 2003 (.xls) to excel 2007 (.xlsx)
format.

Since then I have found that I can save the data after use and when I
re-open the file, sometimes the data is in the format that I saved it and
other times the entire workbook can have numeric data changed to date
format.
It's easy enough to reset, however, it should not require re-formatting.
I suspect you are correct about excel being over-helpful.


Norm Dennis

-----Original Message-----
From: pctech-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:pctech-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx]
On
Behalf Of Vern Hamberg
Sent: Sunday, 26 July 2009 11:36 PM
To: PC Technical Discussion for iSeries Users
Subject: Re: [PCTECH] Excel 2007 numeric converted to date format

Norm

Dates are stored as numbers, as you may know. The integer portion is the
number of days since 1/1/1900 or 1904 or some such - I forget. The
decimal portion is the time of day - noon is .5

So maybe Excel is being over-helpful, as it often is, IMO. Does is
display a date, or the original number? What are the numeric values when
this happens? You might need to change cell format to see the number.

Vern

Norm Dennis wrote:
Hi guys,

I have an issue with Excel 2007 which appears to be intermittent.



I have some spreadsheets inside a workbook which is a fairly simple list
of
transactions that get summarized into a set of totals.

The issue is that occasionally, when I open the spreadsheet the columns
have
been converted to a date format.



Has anyone heard of, seen, had this issue?



TIA,





Norm Dennis






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