format cells before opening

[emilybart]

Hi,
I am a new excel user. I am using a spreadsheet with a lot of data that is six digits... written as, for example, 120-196 or 1109-81 or 06-0899. When I open up my spreadsheet, some of those codes end up automatically switching to dates: Dec-96 or Nov-09 or June-99.

When I re-format the cells, for some reason, the numbers aren't correct. Nov-99 turns into 2664749. Not only is this not the original number (I have printouts of the original data), but I have no idea how excel got nov-99 from that.

I feel like if I can reformat the cells as text before opening the sheet, excel won't have a chance to switch it to dates and the original numbers will be preserved. Anyone know why this is happening, or how I could fix it?

thank you, all.

[gmr4evr1]

What are you formatting the cells as? If you format them as numbers and save it, it should keep the numbers as they are.
If you have already done this, can you attach a sample workbook for us to review?

[nigelbloomy]

You can also try formatting the cells as text. Then Excel won't mistake them for dates or numbers.