cell content changed automatically - need to stop it

I tried to open a txt based file that contains columns and rows (separately by space) using EXCEL. Unfortunately, some of the cells contain words like "SEPT10" "MARCH1" and EXCEL automatically converts those into dates, even after I set the data format into Text, not General in the Text Import Wizard. Is there a way that I could open the file as is in EXCEL without incurring any change to the content? Great many thanks!