[Richard Clark]

Our workplace uses M.S. Office 2001. All updates have been applied to the programs.

Our company uses item numbers (i.e. 12_2937 ) for items in our catalog. One of the co-workers has to put together lists that are exported from Celview MacRumba. Some of those item are changed into dates.

We have also tried to put these item numbers into new Excel spreadsheets by keyboard and have had the same problem. If hiting the tab, arrow or return/enter key then the item turns into a date. So this is not a problem with Celview MacRumba. It is an Excel issue.

Here is a list of item numbers that were input and then how Excel changed it:

What it should be: What is comes out as:
12/2937 Dec-37
4/133 4/133
5/194 5/194
4/2685 Apr-85
4/2278 Apr-78
4/2591 Apr-91
12/892 12/892
35/89 35/89
24/1127 24/1127

The problem has been replicated on a number of machines (G3/266 Beige, G4/733).

If the prefix is a number 1 through 12 and there are 4 numbers after the slash, then the number is read as a date.

Is there any way this can be changed or disabled?

The co-worker that is having this problem has to put large lists together (i.e. 30 pages). If some of the date is changed by Excel they can't tell what the item should be. They don't have to time to go through all the lists, find what is items are wrong and then try to fix it.

Any help or suggestions on this issue would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance for you help!

[Osirisis]

Originally posted by Richard Clark:
Our workplace uses M.S. Office 2001. All updates have been applied to the programs.

Our company uses item numbers (i.e. 12_2937 ) for items in our catalog. One of the co-workers has to put together lists that are exported from Celview MacRumba. Some of those item are changed into dates.

We have also tried to put these item numbers into new Excel spreadsheets by keyboard and have had the same problem. If hiting the tab, arrow or return/enter key then the item turns into a date. So this is not a problem with Celview MacRumba. It is an Excel issue.

Here is a list of item numbers that were input and then how Excel changed it:

What it should be: What is comes out as:
12/2937 Dec-37
4/133 4/133
5/194 5/194
4/2685 Apr-85
4/2278 Apr-78
4/2591 Apr-91
12/892 12/892
35/89 35/89
24/1127 24/1127

The problem has been replicated on a number of machines (G3/266 Beige, G4/733).

If the prefix is a number 1 through 12 and there are 4 numbers after the slash, then the number is read as a date.

Is there any way this can be changed or disabled?

The co-worker that is having this problem has to put large lists together (i.e. 30 pages). If some of the date is changed by Excel they can't tell what the item should be. They don't have to time to go through all the lists, find what is items are wrong and then try to fix it.

Any help or suggestions on this issue would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance for you help!

As long as the cells that the data is being entered into are formatted as text as opposed to general or date, the correct data should be retained. I believe you have an option if you are importing to treat colums as certain types of format. Make sure text is selected for that column.

[symonsl]

Originally posted by Osirisis:
As long as the cells that the data is being entered into are formatted as text as opposed to general or date, the correct data should be retained. I believe you have an option if you are importing to treat colums as certain types of format. Make sure text is selected for that column.

You can also get around this problem by putting a single quote ' before each item. The following info will then be seen as text and not converted to a date.

e.g. '12/1987

[Richard Clark]

Thanks Osirisis and Symonsl. We were able to convert into text fields. There is a second screen we weren't going into that allows us to choose text, number etc.

That helps eleviate the format problem. Now if the mac version of Celview MacRumba would work the same was as the window's version we'd be in good shape. We can't print entire lists (the ones that are 30 pages long). It has to be done by converting only the text seen on the screen . So we have to go screen by screen. Then copy and paste into a master file. The windows version will export to Excel as an entire list.

At least one item is taken care of.

Thank you for your help!