ss cell alignment for dates

[dantept]

Strange that I have never had occasion to find this problem until now, after many years, but ....
• if a cell width is too narrow for an entry and the cell cannot be widened because of its position in the SS, and IF the adjacent cell or cells are empty, one can realign the entry accordingly to make use of the adjacent cells and display the entire entry in that row only- USUALLY!
• the above works for text
• I entered a date - 10/09/07 - and the above worked
• as soon as the date is changed to 10/10/07 or above, the indicator changes to the pound sign and none of the alignments will expand the date display to the other cells
• note that both dates are wider than the cell into which they are entered; the second date is only a tiny bit wider
I am baffled! Neither Help nor the old Claris manual offers a clue.

[Barry]

Strange that I have never had occasion to find this problem until now, after many years, but ....
• if a cell width is too narrow for an entry and the cell cannot be widened because of its position in the SS, and IF the adjacent cell or cells are empty, one can realign the entry accordingly to make use of the adjacent cells and display the entire entry in that row only- USUALLY!
• the above works for text
• I entered a date - 10/09/07 - and the above worked
• as soon as the date is changed to 10/10/07 or above, the indicator changes to the pound sign and none of the alignments will expand the date display to the other cells
• note that both dates are wider than the cell into which they are entered; the second date is only a tiny bit wider
I am baffled! Neither Help nor the old Claris manual offers a clue.

As you correctly note at your second bullet, the above works for TEXT.

Dates, entered in a form which AppleWorks recognizes as a date, are not text, but numbers, and are treated in a manner similar to other numbers. The "#####" display indicates that the cell contains a number that, in the selected format, cannot be fit into the cell.

Apparently AppleWorks is interpreting 10/09/07 as a string of text. You can easily check this by typing that entry into a wide cell for which you have made no changes to the default alignment of data in the cell. AppleWorks defaults to left alignment for text and right alignment for numbers (including time or dates).

I suspect the culprit is the leading zero in the second section of your date.

AppleWorks picks up its 'all number' date format from the preference set in the International pane of System Preferences. But there's a kicker here too—custom settings and some region settings are useable only by Worldscript applications, and AppleWorks is not one of those. Non-Worldscript applications revert to the "last compatible region," which may be one that does not use leading zeros on days or months numbered lower than 10.

Regards,
Barry

PS:

Try this to find what all-numeric date format is being used by your machine:

Enter 12/12/07 into cell A1 of a new spreadsheet.
Enter the formula =A1-1 into cell A2.
Select cells A2..A100, then press command-D to fill the formula down to row 100.
Examine the results.

B

[dantept]

Barry,

Many, many thanks for the quick and accurate response; you are correct in every respect! Oh, well, I may not be able to do exactly what I want to do (except with a text frame), but at least I know I am not missing something!

Dante