How to turn off the automated dates in excel (when importing data)

[Sanna]

Hi, do you know how to turn off the automated dates off when importing data?
I am importing survey results to excels (e.g. 3-5, 6-10) and my excel just
keeps on turning this data into dates (oct-6). This drives me crazy I have
already tried format cells in many ways.

 

[Jaytee]

Have you tried the "Number" tab in the format window?
Highlight the cells you want to change, right click, and select "Format
Cells". Then click the "Numbers" tab. Under this tab, select "Number" from
the list. Select the desired number of decimal places, and this should fix
the problem. Good Luck.

 

[Peo Sjoblom]

How do you import it? You can import it as text. If you import a text file
use the text import wizard and in step 23 select the column and under column
data format select text

 

[Gord Dibben]

And if you're importing using a Web Query you can set it under Options to not
turn those into dates.

Web Query dialog>Options>Disable date recognition.


Gord Dibben MS Excel MVP

 

[Sanna]

Thanks guys!

I was importing (by copy-paste) CSV data from the web page, then using text
to columns function to separate irrelevant data from relevant (orginal data
was in form xxxx;xxxx;yyy;6-10). And it was after this when it turned into
dates what ever I did. At the end I run out of time and just manually used
the replace function to get them into form I wanted. Not probably the wisest
way to do this...

s