Hyphen issue with Excel

Hey folks,

I'm trying to type up a schedule for the drivers at my job; however, I keep running into the following problem: I want to type "11-4," for a shift, but Excel keeps turning that into a date. How can I type something like that into a cell without it turning into a date? I've tried using the number settings, but it keeps turning the number into something like 39,000.

Thanks.

right-click, format cells, number tab, format as text

select a block of cells (shift-click) and format them before you enter the times

Try:

Right click the entire column you're using. Format cells. On the number tab choose "text."

Goddamnit...why the fuck couldn't I think of that?!

Thanks, Flint!

Or, what Flint said. :)

I'm just curious how 4-Nov translates to 39,390 ... ???

I KNOW...I was getting that too.

I was just doing spreadsheet work this morning...combining two involved sheets into one, and I still get lost on some of the intricacies (doing v-lookups.)

Oh.

Who would win in a fight: Gregorian, Julian, Conan, or Chuck Norris?

You can also type the line as

'11-4

The initial apostrophe keeps it formatted as text, but isn't displayed.

That's a good tip. It will mess up formulas (because though not displayed it's still there,) but if you're not using it for anything like that it will work just fine.

Today I learned something at the Cellar that I can apply to work. How's that for serendipity?

A little late but what Pie said ...
I lurve Excel :compute:

I just saw this interesting article. I tried it and Excel did get the wrong answer (actually, I think it's just displaying it in the wrong format). I'm using Excel 2007.