Opening tab-delimited files in Excel... how to stop the autoformat of dates?

[salamander]

Hello,

I'm doing bioinformatics work in which I often download tab-delimited files describing genomes and open them in Excel. Unfortunately, Excel decides that genes with names like APR1 and SEP7 are actually dates, and reformats them as such. This is a huge headache, as I often don't notice these problems until much later.

Is there anyway to completely disable this date autoformatting? I've searched high and low and have yet to find a solution.

Thanks!

P.S. I'm using Excel 2002

[wjohnson]

If you use the FILE OPEN option to bring you external file into EXCEL - In STEP 3 of the TEXT IMPORT WIZARD - you can define those columns as TEXT and then EXCEL should not "change" those items to a DATE format.
If you copy and PASTE the file into EXCEL - and the information will "always" be in the same "columns" create an EXCEL Template - make those columns as "TEXT" and then save the "blank file" as "Yourfilename.xlt" then just double click on the xlt file - you will get a blank file - just like in WORD. This should work for you. You can also select the X number of columns you are going to use when importing - and then FORMAT CELLS - TEXT option, if you select the whole WORKSHEET and do this - then you need to reformat the CELLS as GENERAL if you are going to enter formulas, etc. later.