problem with replacing texts that are like dates .....

the problem arises when you're replacing a text with another text that excel thinks of as date, like 1/1.
you cant use format button in replace dialog-box because it first converts the text to date and then formats it as text that results in a strange number like 41640.
You can off course use formula but it is not always handy to do it.
I was wondering if anyone has any solutions for this?
sincerely...

it's not the date that i want. it is the text.
For example you we have a column of numbers and we want to add "/1" to them, so if it was originally "1", it would change to "1/1". And when you do so, you will not get "1/1" but "1-jan".
it is "1/1" that we need not the date.

that works too but I found a better way.
if you put an apostrophe before a string, it forces excel to treat it as text, hence keeping it the way it was...
For above question, I used '1/1 instead of 1/1. and ' is not a part of cells's value...