141–144 of 144 posts
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Disagree, the most common way for an experienced user to type a date into Excel is as a partial date if it is this year, eg 4-Apr, which is instantly converted to 04/04/2025 or whatever. The vast majority of dates I personally type into Excel would be in this form.
Format the column as date. Or turn on the global option for loose type insanity.
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If you want the text "1/2" you should type '1/2 If you want the value one-half you should type =1/2 Not sure why this is controversial, Excel obviously has a syntax that's not focused on reproducing literal text.
You're not responding to the part where parent says the result is not 1/2 as in 0.5 but 2-Jan. The boobytrapped date parsing appears to be still happening even with "Automatic Data Conversions" disabled.
That is desired behaviour. If you want the string 1/2 you need to use an apostrophe. If you want the fraction one half you need to use an equals sign. Both of these are vastly less likely to be what a user wants than the date interpretation, so it makes sense for that to be the default.
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The setting only applies when you enter or edit a value. It doesn't convert values which are already stored in a cell.
Yeah... a slow burn that is difficult to notice until it's too late.
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You're not responding to the part where parent says the result is not 1/2 as in 0.5 but 2-Jan. The boobytrapped date parsing appears to be still happening even with "Automatic Data Conversions" disabled.
I understood that 1/2 converts to 2-Jan (or 1-Feb depending on settings). That is desired behaviour. If you want the string 1/2 you need to use an apostrophe. If you want the fraction one half you need to use an equals sign. Both of these are vastly less likely to be what a user wants than the date interpretation, so it makes sense for that to be the default.