stupid excel

[Kev]

i'm trying to copy time code as text (something like 00:00:04) and stupid worthless excel keeps thinking i want it auto-formatted to a time. so it autoformats it to a time, which is wrong, i want it as plain text, then i try to change the cell properties to "general" and it changes the data to some long number.

anyone know how to stop this autoformat nonsense? excel help is another useless feature that i will not go into here

 

[teddymines]

After you paste, select your column and go to Format/Cells/Custom. Then in the Type text box enter hh:mm:ss.

 

[Ameesh]

sounds like someone needs to have a conversation with clippy.

 

[BornStar]

If you aren't going to be doing any math on it, you could also just make the type "Text".

 

[dullard]

I don't know how to turn off that type of behavior. But I do know how to solve your problem. By default every cell is set to "general". If you type something that looks like one of the more specific types, Excel (unfortunately for you) converts any "General" cell to that specific data type. So if you open a blank Excel sheet and type:

00:00:04

Then Excel will change that from "General" to "Time" (or a custom time). But for your use, you don't want it to be converted to "Time" (or the custom time). Now every time you copy this, it will convert all other cells to "Time" as well. The fix to this is to first tell Excel you are typing "Text". So go to a blank cell, change the type to "Text", and then type in your time. From now on it will always be "Text" and when you copy and paste it, the new cells will be "Text".

 

[Rogue]

Put a single quote before the text string and Excel will treat it as text. Next question? 😀

 

[Kev]

thanks everyone!

 

[Papagayo]

Instead of getting pissed off at a software, why don't you learn how to use it..

 

[HomeBrewerDude]

copy, then paste>special>value ... i think that will work. if not, format the cell to text.

 

[dnuggett]

Originally posted by: Papagayo
Instead of getting pissed off at a software, why don't you learn how to use it..

Stupid user...