Excel will turn your date into an unrelated number. For example, 3/3/2017 becomes 42797 when it's not formatted as a date. Related coverage from How To Do Everything: Tech : ...

Microsoft Excel has a feature to change a number into a date, and it is quite simple to do. This tutorial will explain the steps to change a number into a date format in Excel.

How to Convert 5-Digit Julian Dates to Regular Dates in Excel. The Julian date format is a five digit number broken into two parts: a two-digit representation of the year followed by a three-digit ...

If the numbers keep changing to dates in Microsoft Excel, you can use the following methods to fix the issue: Format cells as text. Insert an apostrophe before the number.