At 05:05 12/07/2009 -0500, Tamblyne Noname wrote:
I am trying to use Calc (v.3.1.0) for a cemetery transcription. I
have a "born" column and a "died" column. It would be nice to use a
date format for these, but sometimes I only have a year -- not the
whole date -- and that makes a mess of things.
The problem I'm having is that I can't seem to change the cell
format to just text. No matter what I do, it wants to put a number
in there. How do I make OOo understand that, all evidence to the
contrary, a "text" cell is really what I want? Or is there some
other way I can get it to leave my year-only entries alone?
You can set the format of a single cell to "Text", of course - which
will change whatever format you may have chosen for the column or
other range. I notice that the result is different depending on
whether I apply text formatting to a cell before or after entering
the date - which is not surprising, in fact. If you let Calc
recognise a date, it stores a number but displays it as a date, and
the precise format in which you entered the date is lost; if the cell
is formatted first, the actual characters you enter are preserved.
But there is a simpler way: just precede what you type with an
apostrophe. This will not display in the cell (though it does in the
Input line), but indicates to Calc that you want this entry
interpreted just as text. Note that you need a plain apostrophe
here, not a "smart" one. If necessary, either go to Tools |
AutoCorrect Options... | Custom Quotes | Single quotes and remove the
tick from Replace, or else use Edit | Undo (or Ctrl+Z) immediately
after you type the apostrophe, which will undo the autocorrection and
leave the plain apostrophe.
You may find it useful whilst experimenting to switch on View | Value
Highlighting: text values will then appear in black and numbers -
including dates - in blue. (The help text says that dates appear in
green, but this appears not to be so.)
I trust this helps.
Brian Barker
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