Paste from Web Form without auto formatting

[Joshua Ammann]

I am using Excel 2000, but I am pretty sure I have observed this
behaviour before in other versions:

How can you paste a table of values into Excel without the program
interpreting the values as anything except text? Here is a good example
table:
http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/standings/grid

When I copy and paste a table such as this one into Excel, the cell
values consisting of two numbers separated by a dash get formatted as a
date values, even though they are not dates. (For example: the season
series between Baltimore and Boston is now 4-4. Excel pastes it as
4/4/2005.)

Pre-formatting the cells as text does not work. Changing the format to
text after pasting only changes the dates to their serial number
equivalent. I have also tried every "paste special" option, with no
success.

This also happens with other values, such as duration. Values such as
"2:13" (meaning an event duration of two minutes and thirteen seconds)
also get pasted as date/time values. Basically, anything Excel "thinks"
it recognizes as a specific format, becomes that format, instead of
just flat text (and letting the user select a format later).

I'm sure this must have come up before but I couldn't find it in my
searching. Thanks for any tips or pointers in the right direction.

JA

 

[Dave Peterson]

One workaround is to copy and paste into notepad. Then save that as a .Txt
file.

Then use File|open to open the .txt file. You'll see the import wizard pop open
and you can specify that each of those fields should be treated as text (not
date and not General).