How to stop text changing to date

I have a column of text that's in the style 1994/95, 1995/96, etc. When I
paste it into Excel, after setting the column to Format Cell General, the
entries beginning with 19 go in as text. That's what's supposed to happen.
But -- here's my problem -- the entries 2000/01, 2001/02, etc. go in as
dates. I can't fix this even by manually deleting the dates, resetting the
cell format to General, and TYPING in the characters. The cells above are
still showing as Format Cell General. The problem cells mysteriously change
from General to Custom.

There must be some way to stop this 'helpful feature.' Any suggestions?

Excel 2003.

If you're doing one cell, you can preformat the cell as text and then paste into
the formula bar.

If you're doing multiple cells, I'd paste into a text file (notepad), then
file|open that text file.

When you open the text file, you'll see the text import wizard popup. You can
specify that you want certain fields brought in as text -- not General and not
dates.

Abbi wrote:
>
> I have a column of text that's in the style 1994/95, 1995/96, etc. When I
> paste it into Excel, after setting the column to Format Cell General, the
> entries beginning with 19 go in as text. That's what's supposed to happen.
> But -- here's my problem -- the entries 2000/01, 2001/02, etc. go in as
> dates. I can't fix this even by manually deleting the dates, resetting the
> cell format to General, and TYPING in the characters. The cells above are
> still showing as Format Cell General. The problem cells mysteriously change
> from General to Custom.
>
> There must be some way to stop this 'helpful feature.' Any suggestions?
>
> Excel 2003.

--

Dave Peterson

Thanks. For those reading this, one of my mistakes was formating the cell as
General when I should have formatted it as Text.

Abbi

"Dave Peterson" wrote:

> If you're doing one cell, you can preformat the cell as text and then paste into
> the formula bar.
>
> If you're doing multiple cells, I'd paste into a text file (notepad), then
> file|open that text file.
>
> When you open the text file, you'll see the text import wizard popup. You can
> specify that you want certain fields brought in as text -- not General and not
> dates.
>
> Abbi wrote:
> >
> > I have a column of text that's in the style 1994/95, 1995/96, etc. When I
> > paste it into Excel, after setting the column to Format Cell General, the
> > entries beginning with 19 go in as text. That's what's supposed to happen.
> > But -- here's my problem -- the entries 2000/01, 2001/02, etc. go in as
> > dates. I can't fix this even by manually deleting the dates, resetting the
> > cell format to General, and TYPING in the characters. The cells above are
> > still showing as Format Cell General. The problem cells mysteriously change
> > from General to Custom.
> >
> > There must be some way to stop this 'helpful feature.' Any suggestions?
> >
> > Excel 2003.
>
> --
>
> Dave Peterson
>