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TheAnt's avatar
TheAnt
Copper Contributor
Mar 12, 2025
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How to get a dropdown list of numbers, not dates?

I need to insert a dropdown list into an Excel cell with a set of values exactly like this: 2025-04-01 10:00:00 2025-04-01 10:30:00 2025-04-01 11:00:00 2025-04-01 11:30:00 How do I stop Excel fr...
  • ExcelExciting's avatar
    Mar 14, 2025

    When you paste the value in cells its automatic formatting changes it to numbers and we need to explicitly store it as text. 

    There are two way to deal with this issue:

    Type an apostrophe (') at the beginning of each entry if you have limited values.

    '2025-04-01 10:00
    '2025-04-01 10:30

    this store the value as text

    Formula version which is more effective for larger dataset, add helper column and use the function TEXT() to convert these values into text and reference dropdown list to the helper column.

    =TEXT(A2,"yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss")

     

    Solution with TEXT()

    If this resolves your query don't forget Mark as Solution.

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