Cells in excel will not format

A formatting issue in Excel may affect fonts, charts, shading, colors, borders, number formats, file formats, cell formats, hyperlink formats, and several other elements. For each of these different Excel format issues — Font Type and Size changed, Chart formatting, Conditional Formatting Rules, Text formatted to Number, Number formatted to Text or Date, Dates formatted to Numbers, etc. there are specific solutions.

A few common Excel formatting issues and how to fix them

1. Date Format issue in Excel:

The typed-in date changes to a number, text, another format of date (for example, MM/DD/YYYY may change to DD/MM/YYYY), or any other format that Excel does not recognize.

An example of Excel Date Format issue is as follows:

A user enters or types a Date — September 6 in a cell of Excel file. However, on pressing the ‘Enter’ key the value of the cell converts to a ‘Number.’

This implies that the cell’s number format is not in sync with what the user is trying to achieve. The cell is set to the Number format, which converts the input to a numerical value.

Solution: Right-click the cell containing the Date, select ‘Format Cells’, click ‘Date’ present under Number à Category and finally choose a Date format of choice (Example: DD/MM/YYYY format).

Note – This is valid for older versions of Excel.

In Excel 2007 and above versions; click a cell, next click the drop-down arrow in the Number section of the Home tab. In doing so, a list of the Number format appears, along with the data represented in each of the formats.

1. Number Format Issue and how to fix it

The Number format issue in Excel is an issue wherein a Number is formatted or changed to Text, Date, or any other format that is not recognized by Excel.

Solution: In such cases, users can use Error Checking or Paste Special as fixes.

1. Formatting issues in font type, size, color, and conditional formatting:

These generally occur in Excel if users open Excel files on a system other than where those were created, or if the new system runs an older Office/Excel version.

Solution: Users should make sure they save the Excel files in the native and widely accepted Excel 2007/2010 format, and not in the older Excel 97-2003 format. These are the options that users get while saving the Excel file using ‘Save As’ feature.

Users can also try to fix the Excel formatting issue by transferring all data from the current spreadsheet or workbook to a new and usable Excel workbook.

1. Excel XLS or XLSX file corruption:

In such situations, the Excel files need to be repaired which can be done by using either the inbuilt ‘Open or Repair’ utility or an Excel file repair software such as Stellar Repair for Excel.

The software repairs the damaged Excel (XLS or XLSX) file in 3 quick and easy steps: Select, Scan, and Save. You can save the repaired file either at the default or desired location.

Conclusion

Despite being an amazing application that allows users to create and process complex data in workbooks. Microsoft Excel is not free from concerns including the ones that arise due to formatting issues. This is true for all Excel versions, be it the latest Excel 2016 or other lower versions. Therefore, the need to employ the appropriate fixes whenever required.

In addition, the use of an advanced Excel repair tool is recommended to fix issues that appear due to Excel file corruption. An advanced software such as Stellar Repair for Excel recovers the lost formatting from corrupt Excel files. It offers an intuitive interface to repair Font formatting, Chart Formatting, Conditional formatting rules and more while preserving the data format at the time of restoring the Excel files.

When you fill out Excel worksheets with data, no one will succeed at once, everything is beautiful and correctly filled at the first attempt.

In the process of working with the program, you always need something: modify, edit, delete, copy or move. If the entered incorrect values in a cell, naturally, we want to correct or delete ones. But even such simple task can sometimes create difficulties.



How to set the cell format in Excel?

The contents of each Excel cell consist of three elements:

1. The meaning: text, numbers, dates and times, logical content, functions and formulas.
2. The formats: the type and color of the borders, the type and color of the fill, the way the values are displayed.
3. Comments.

All these three elements are completely independent of each other. You can specify the format of the cell and do not write anything to it, or add a note in an empty and not formatted cell.



How to change the format of cells in Excel?

To change the format of the cells, you should call the corresponding dialog box with the CTRL + 1 (or CTRL + SHIFT + F) key or from the context menu after you right-click the «Cell Format» option.

There are 6 tabs in this dialog box:

1. A number. Here you specify the way the numeric values are displayed.
2. The alignment. On this tab you can control the position of the text. And the text can be displayed vertically or diagonally from any angle. Also pay attention to the «Display» section. Very often, the function «Wrap Text» is used.



3. Font. The specify the style design of fonts, the size and color of the text, plus the modes of modifications.
4. The border. Here you define the styles and colors of the borders. The design of all tables is better done right here.
5. The fill. The name of the bookmark speaks for itself. Available for formatting colors, patterns and methods of filling (for example, a gradient with a different direction of strokes).
6. The protection. Here, the cell protection settings are set, that are activated only after the protection of the whole sheet.

If you did not get the desired result on the first attempt, call this dialog again to fix the cell format in Excel.

What formatting is applicable to cells in Excel?

Each cell always has some format. If there were no changes, then this is the «General» format. It is also a standard Excel format, in which:

• the numbers are aligned on the right side;
• the text is aligned on the left side;
• the font Calibri with the height of 11 points;
• the cell has no borders and background fill.

The Format Removal – is the changing to the standard «General» format (without borders and fills).

It is worth noting that the format of cells, unlike values, can not be deleted with the DELETE key.

To delete the format of cells, select ones and use the «Clear Formats» tool, which is located on the «HOME» tab in the «Editing» section.

If you want to clear not only the format, but also the values, then select the «Clear All» option from the drop-down list of the tool (eraser).

As you can see, the eraser tool is functionally flexible and allows us to make a choice of what to delete in the cells:

• the content (same as the DELETE key);
• the formats;
• notes;
• the hyperlinks.

The option «Clear all» combines all these functions.

The deleting notes

Note, as well as formats, are not deleted from the cell by pressing the DELETE key. You can delete notes in two ways:

1. The eraser tool: the option «Clear notes».
2. Click on the cell with the note with the right mouse button, and from the appeared context menu select the option «Delete note».

The notation. The second way is more convenient. If you delete several notes at the same time, you must first select all of its cells.

Bill has a large worksheet that he can no longer format cells within. When he right-clicks on a cell and selects Format, the Format Cells dialog box never appears. Likewise, if he chooses Cells from the Format menu, the dialog box never shows up.

This, obviously, is not the way that Excel is supposed to behave. Since the problem occurs with only a single workbook, the problem is most likely not with Excel itself, but with the workbook. There are a few things you can try to track down the problem.

First, make sure that you open the workbook with macros disabled. Hold down the Shift key as you double-click the workbook in Windows Explorer, then indicate that you don’t want to enable the macros. If the problem persists, you can rule out it being rooted in a macro. If the problem goes away, then you know you need to examine the macros to see which one is causing the problem.

Second, the file (which Bill mentions is both old and large) could have so many formats defined within it that you can no longer do formatting. This problem has been covered in other issues of ExcelTips, and you can find related information, including a way to free up formats, here:

https://bettersolutions.com/excel/formatting/vba-delete-unused-custom-formats.htm

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office_2007-excel/delete-custom-formats/23d6727c-d052-e011-8dfc-68b599b31bf5?db=5

Look for the macro entitled DeleteUnusedCustomNumberFormats; it can help clean up the no-longer-used custom formats.

Another thing to try is to save the worksheet as an HTML file, get out of Excel, get back into the program, and then load the HTML file. Sometimes the «round trip» for a worksheet will clear up some quirks that may be confusing Excel.

Author Bio

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. Learn more about Allen…

As we all know that Microsoft Excel is a very helpful and popular workbook for users to store any kind of important data safely.

In Microsoft Excel users stores various types of valuable, confidential, official, projects, and important data in a sequence order with dates as per their convenience. Along with dates, numbers and times are also the most common data types that people use in Excel.

But sometimes if you want to change the date of your Excel document, you are unable to change the date due to unexpected errors.

Therefore, today here I am with my new blog post discussing date format not changing in Excel. Don’t worry; I will discuss each and everything in detail about why date format does not change in Excel.

So, let us go through this blog carefully to solve the issue of Excel unable to change date format.

Practical Scenario:

Excel date formatting not working

I have an Excel sheet created by a 3rd party program.

One of the columns has dates in this format: “Jan 19, 2015, 03:00:00 PM”

I would like these dates to appear in the following format: “19/01/2015”

I have selected the cell or cells, right-clicked and selected “Format Cells…” chose “Date” in the category, then chose “14/03/2001” in the type, to no avail, the dates won’t change.

I also tried “Custom” from the category and “dd/mm/yyyy” from the type, again, no changes at all.

The file is not protected, the sheet is editable.

Could someone explain what I could be doing wrong?

Regards Crouz

Source: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/28516923/excel-date-formatting-not-working

Why Is My Date Formula Not Working In Excel?

There may certain causes or unwanted reasons that date formula not working in Excel properly. But before we get into the solutions of date format Excel not working issue, let’s put a spotlight on some of the causes for why is my date formula not working in Excel.

1) Cells are formatted as text

Cells are formatted as text means that the formula will appear directly in the cells instead of text. This is due to when you import any data from notepad or CSV file.

2) The workbook is to be set in Manual calculation mode

If you are doing any type of calculation work in Excel by copying and pasting the formula, then the result will be copied in place of the right answer. This will appear until you set the workbook in manual calculation mode.

As we all know that users like to save their Excel files as per the dates in manual order for convenience in use. People can also change the dates whenever required as per their need but sometimes due to unwanted errors date format does not change in Excel.

So, there are different ways to fix the issue of date format does not change in Excel and they are as follows:

Method #1: Sorting The Date

To fix Excel unable to change date format issue, just follow the steps given below.

• At first, press the Window + R button to open the Run dialog box
• Then type Regedit and then press the OK button
• Now, select the HKEY_CURRENT_USER option

• Here choose the Control Panel menu.
• After that choose the International option.
• Now, double click on sShortDate menu.
• Another window will open the screen.
• Here, change the format of the date that you want to change.

Method #2: Format The Cells

In Microsoft Excel, dates can be displayed in a variety of ways. To solve date format Excel not working issue, go through the below steps:

• Open your Excel worksheet
• Now, right-click on the top of the Excel column and select the Format Cells menu
• After selecting the Format Cells, a format cells Window will appear

• Here, choose the Date option and select the date format that you needed for that particular column
• Finally, click on the OK button to save the format change and then close the Window
• Thus, by following this step you will able to solve your date format problem

Method #3: Resize The Cells Size

Generally, MS Excel understands the dates exceptionally fine and it is improbable to hit any barrier when working with them.

If still, you are facing date format Excel not working issue, then just follow the troubleshooting tips provided to you to get rid of date format not changing in Excel problem.

If the cell is not having enough space to fit the complete date and you observe a number of pound signs (#####) in place of the dates in your Excel spreadsheet, then the cells are not broad to the completion dates that you enter.

Now to auto fix the dates, double click on the right border of the column to resize it. Or else, to set the column width; just drag it to the right border to fix the date format Excel not working issue.

So, this method is applicable for date format not changing in Excel 2007, 2013, 2016.

Method #4: Change The Date To Number Format

To fix the issue of Excel unable to change date format to real dates, with the help of Number format commands you can format them.

To perform this, follow the steps given below:

• Go to your Excel document
• Select the Dates that you want to format
• Now, go to the Excel Ribbon menu

• Select the Number Format option
• Or else click on the dialog launcher option to see more format options

• After that convert, the text dates to real dates and see that everything is working properly or not

Recommended Solution: MS Excel Repair & Recovery Tool

While performing the steps to solve the date format Excel not working issues in different Excel files such as  XLS, XLSX, XLT, XLS, XLSM, XLSX,  sometimes due to unwanted causes or circumstances your files get damaged or deleted.

So in that scenario, we have a professional recommended tool i.e. MS Excel Repair & Recovery Tool to repair all types of Excel files like XLS, XLSX, XLT, XLS, XLSM, XLSX with ease.

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With the help of this software, you can restore all types of Excel files such as tables, columns, formulas, dates, charts, images and many more.

As well as you can also fix all types of MS Excel corruption errors and it is used in all the versions of MS Excel which includes Excel 2000, 2003, 2007, 2010, 2016 & 2019.

Steps to Utilize MS Excel Repair & Recovery Tool:

Conclusion:

Hope the above-specified solutions suggested to you will help you to solve the issue of Date format not changing in Excel.

I tried my level best to bring simple and effective ways to fix why is my date format not changing in Excel problems.

Thus, make proper use of the methods provided to you and in the future also if you come across such types of issues then you can easily get rid of this with ease.