Turn off Excel's automatically copying number formatting of target cell

Hi,
there is a 'feature' of Excel (2003, SP2) that I'd like to turn off, but haven't found a way to.

I might, for example, have a value in 'scientific' format in cell A1. Now I may wish to 'echo' that value, or use it in a formula, say in cell B2. Suppose B2 is initially empty and has the (default) 'general' number formatting. Then entering "=A1" in B2 will make its number formatting switch automatically to 'scientific'.
Of course, this can be reverted, by manually changing B2 to 'general' number formatting. However it is frustrating to continually have to do this when copying or editing multiple cells. Furthermore, subsequent edits to the formula will cause the number formatting to again automatically switch to 'scientific'!
The same thing happens when entering "=A1/2" into B2, for example. It is _not_ because the value in A1 (or B2) is very large or very small: the value in A1 could be 1, and the above occurs — it only depending upon the number formatting.
When entering a formula referencing cells with a combination of number formats, it is unpredictable how the destination cell will be automatically changed, if at all!

Does anyone know how to turn this off??

Thanks,
- DIV

P.S. It only seems keen to override 'general' number formatting. Is there a custom number format I can create that is equivalent to 'general'. I know "#" can be used to have flexible significant figures, but sometimes (for large/small values) I _would_ want the formatting to be represented as scientific (as happens in the 'general' format)!

Hi,
that sounds like a good idea, and it sounds like it should work ...but it doesn't.
In fact I had already turned this option off quite some time ago.

Any other ideas?

Or perhaps that option is supposed to work, and my installation is corrupted. (Please someone confirm this if you think it's the case [i.e. tell me ticking/unticking toggles the problem], as I'm not keen to reinstall because of this, and certainly not without any confidence that it would actually work!)

Thanks.

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