Excel exponential numbers problem

I have an Excel file that's used to import into a SQL database. However, I have some numeric columns that are being auto-formatted as exponential numbers. I can convert some to numeric format to keep this from happening, but I have a couple that can contain either numeric or alphanumeric values. If I format this as number and import, it will not import the alphanumeric values. I think I can put a tick (') on the beginning of the values to keep this from happening, but how do I prepend a tick to the beginning of 36000 rows?

Hi,

Why don't you have this specific field marked as text within the code that performs the SQL extract ...

HTH