Just a quick one.

[Biggy]

In Excel when I type 1 - 3 for example it changes to a date (1-March).. How can I stop it from doing that? (I obviously have not used Excel much/at all before..)

 

[Abhas]

Go to that cell, Press CTRL + 1, in the screen that appears, choose the cell type as text, or general.
Press OK
Should do the trick

Abhas added 3 Minutes and 7 Seconds later...

Another way to do it is,
When typing 1-3, instead type '1-3 (with the single quote at the start)
this will store the data as text.

 

[Biggy]

Go to that cell, Press CTRL + 1, in the screen that appears, choose the cell type as text, or general.
Press OK
Should do the trick

Abhas added 3 Minutes and 7 Seconds later...

Another way to do it is,
When typing 1-3, instead type '1-3 (with the single quote at the start)
this will store the data as text.

Thanks a lot.

 

[SciD]

Go to that cell, Press CTRL + 1, in the screen that appears, choose the cell type as text, or general.
Press OK
Should do the trick

Abhas added 3 Minutes and 7 Seconds later...

Another way to do it is,
When typing 1-3, instead type '1-3 (with the single quote at the start)
this will store the data as text.

' is used to store numbers which start with 0

Also make sure to maintain format throughout your work as it will lead to #N/A error while using VLOOKUP

 

[Abhas]

' is used to store data in the cell as text, so whatever you type, you'll get that. Numbers starting with 0 is a good example where this needs to be used.