I type a date (1/05) in a cell, press enter, it reads ####.Why?

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Guest

I'm entering data inMicrosoft Excel and am fairly new to Excel. I'm entering
dates in cells in a worksheet and typred in a date and pressed enter and all
it will do is read #####. Why does it do this and how do I get the computer
to recognise the actual numbers of the date I entered? erg
 
Probably the cell is not wide enough.

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Kind regards,

Niek Otten
Microsoft MVP - Excel

| I'm entering data inMicrosoft Excel and am fairly new to Excel. I'm entering
| dates in cells in a worksheet and typred in a date and pressed enter and all
| it will do is read #####. Why does it do this and how do I get the computer
| to recognise the actual numbers of the date I entered? erg
 
I'm entering data inMicrosoft Excel and am fairly new to Excel. I'm entering
dates in cells in a worksheet and typred in a date and pressed enter and all
it will do is read #####. Why does it do this and how do I get the computer
to recognise the actual numbers of the date I entered? erg
Click to expand...

The cell is probably too narrow. The solutions include:

1. Making the cell wider. You can do that by dragging the right column
edge at the top of the column to the right, making the whole column
wider.

2. Changing the font size in that cell so that more characters can fit
into the cell. Select the call and change the number in the point size
field.

3. Changing the format of the data so that it is more compact. If the
date is being displayed as "February 3, 2007", change it to "2/03/07"
or just "2/03". Right click on the cell and select Format Cells. Then
select the appropriate Date formatting.
 
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