Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated September 11, 2021)
This tip applies to Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021
Gary has a worksheet that people in his office use for data entry. He wants to make sure that in a particular cell they can only enter a numeric value. He wonders how to stop them from entering other entries—like text or dates or times—in the cell.
The easiest way to do this is to use Excel's data validation feature. This feature allows you to define the parameters of what can be entered in a cell. Follow these steps:
Figure 1. The Settings tab of the Data Validation dialog box.
People can now enter only a numeric value within the range you specified. The one exception to this is dates and times. Since they are maintained internally by Excel as numbers, it is possible to enter a date, provided the date is parsed into a numeric value that is within the range you specify.
For instance, if you set up data validation to only allow values between 20,000 and 21,000, then someone could enter a date of 6/11/1956 because Excel parses the date to the whole number 20,617. The best way to handle dates and times is to format the cell so that it uses a numeric format, which will stop Excel from displaying dates and times.
ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (6263) applies to Microsoft Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Excel here: Limiting Entries to Numeric Values.
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