My colleague has sent me an excel file with lots of data, pivot tables, and charts. But there is something weird with the file's default cell format. When I enter a date into a cell "1/1/2014" it turns into "EUR 41,640.00" Where "EUR" is the Euro symbol.
I right clicked on a cell and went to number format cells and under number, it says "Accounting" and under symbol it says "Euro". So that explains it. Now, my question is, can I change the format for the entire workbook and all its sheets and charts and tables, in one shot, to something that a normal/default excel sheet has where it can recognize dates for dates, currency for currency, and numbers for numbers and will that mess us all the existing pivot tables and data? I would think that it won't mess up the numbers but simply the formatting but I want to be absolutely sure before I change the default format for the entire workbook.
I went to File-> Options->General/Formulas etc but I can't find cell formats there.
Excel just thinks this is a number, namely 41640.
For each column of Euros-that-should-be-dates, right-click on the column header (like the letter A above the first column) and choose Format Cells...
Then pick your preferred date format.
This happens sometimes when the file has different currency or date default settings.