How to Stop Excel From Autoformatting as Date

Autoformatting and autocorrect features can be great when working with numbers and formulas, but it can get consistently annoying when Excel changes numbers to dates. This usually happens when you try to enter fractions or decimal numbers (depending on the date separator for your region). Here’s how to prevent Excel from formatting numbers as dates.

Unfortunately, while Excel has autocorrect settings, there’s no way to disable this behavior, so you’ll need to use a workaround.

Option 1: Prevent Excel From Formatting Numbers as Dates With Cell Formatting

The “General” format allows Excel to basically pick and choose which format to apply based on the contexts, but it defaults to dates over numbers. If it autocorrects to a date, you’ll get a “Custom” format. But, you can “preload” a cell or range with the specific format you want to stop Excel autoformatting dates in blank cells.

Step 1. Select the cell or range where you want to prevent Excel from formatting numbers as dates.

Step 2. In the “Home” tab on the ribbon, go to the “Number” section.

Step 3. Click on the dropdown that lists the format of the cell (by default, “General”), then choose the format you want, such as “Number.”

With the cell formatting locked in, it won’t accept anything that doesn’t fit the pattern.

Option 2: Stop Excel Autoformatting Dates by Forcing Textual Input

One of the easiest ways to have Excel display the exact text you want instead of autocorrecting it to a date or a number is to use a leading ‘ (single apostrophe) character. In Excel, this indicates that you’re writing a string input, which will force Excel to display it as text but internally register it as whatever format it autocorrects to.

This is fairly simple, and all you have to do is write your input with a leading apostrophe, such as “’1/2” to indicate one half rather than January 2nd or February 1st (depending on which region Excel is set to). Note that you don’t need to close the apostrophe.

Excel also won’t display the apostrophe when viewing the entire dataset, but it will be shown in the formula bar when you select the cell.

However, note that for calculation purposes, the cell will be treated as a date or more precisely the number that Excel saves it as. In the example of 1/2, Excel will save January 2, 2025, as “45658.”

Alternatively, you can use a leading space. This will force Excel to save the cell as true textual input. For example, “1/2” is saved as text and won’t be able to be used in calculations.

Option 3: Prevent Excel From Saving Fractions as Dates

If you want to automatically apply the number format to a cell where you have a fraction input (such as 1/2), you can also use a leading zero and a space.

For example, typing “0 1/2” and leaving the cell will force Excel to put it into the “Fraction” format, which won’t display the leading zero or space and will stop Excel autoformatting dates in these cells.

This allows Excel to treat the resulting number as a fraction rather than the date, which can make some calculations more intuitive. In the sample image, cell A2 contains “0 1/2” while cell B2 uses the formula “=A2-1.” Excel automatically reformatted B2 into “Fraction” and saved A2 as “0.5.”