I am using a spreadsheet in Numbers.
One of my columns contains a list of the number of baseball games won and lost at home from 1902-15, for example, the notation 2-1 means the team won two games and lost one. The list changes as more games are played, so the next cell down might be 3-1, then 4-1, then 4-2, etc.
The problem is that occasionally I enter data in a cell in which the notation 2-1 (just an example) will appear as a date, such as Feb. 1, 2012.
I then go to the inspector to change the entire column (which I highlight by clicking on the letter at the top of the column) and change the cell format to "TEXT." But that doesn't work. So I have to click on "DATE" and that changes all 300 cells in the column to a date. I then go back and convert to "TEXT" again. But this time it only converts it back to a numerical format of the same date that was in the cells as a result of the previous step.
I cannot get the format to revert to the orignal I had, and now I must re-do each cell individually. This will take at least a half-hour, and I am very unhappy about this. I suspect there is an inherent flaw in Numbers here. What do you think and do you have any suggestions for how I can avoid this in the future?
I hope I'm explaining myself clearly, but if I'm not, please let me know, as I would hope there would be some kind of solution to this problem.