Unfortunately there is no way to turn this off. But there are ways to get around it. Preformat the cells you want to enter numbers into as Text. This way Excel will not try to change what you enter into dates. If you only have a few numbers to enter, you can stop Excel from changing them into dates by entering: A space before you enter a number.
Moreover, why does excel keep changing my numbers to dates?
Excel keeps changing my numbers into dates. Sometimes importing data into spreadsheets gives you headaches. While this issue is not directly related to Datawrapper, it’s a common and known issue with Excel – which can be frustrating and time-consuming: Excel is trained to “detect” formats, and sometimes the software tends to wrongly assume.
For example, you type a credit card ID number in the following format: In this situation, Excel changes the last digit to a zero. Cause Excel follows the IEEE 754 specification for how to store and calculate floating-point numbers.
Enter numbers in the selected cells and check to see if the issue persists. If changing the format for the cells isn’t something that is convenient for you, adding a symbol before entering the numbers should stop Excel from reformatting the numbers.
Why is my number not being displayed correctly in Excel?
After you enter a long number (such as a credit card number ) in an Excel cell, the number is not displayed correctly in Excel. For example, Note Default number format in Excel is General therefore you can display up to 11 digits in a cell. Workaround To work around this issue, use one of the following methods. Method 1: Format the cell as text.
The number format does not affect the actual cell value, which is displayed in the formula bar. When Excel displays cell such ##### it means that cell is to narrow. Just make it wider. Further reading: How to define custom number format?