Turning off auto date formatting

[TJ]

How can I turn off the auto date formatting function in
Excel? I'm dragging data in from another application and
Excel is converting some of the data (i.e. 01-05) into
dates. I can't modify the cell formats before pasting
because the other application launches a new file as part
of the paste operation (which uses the default cell
formats). Therefore, I need to turn off the auto date
format feature so it will be off when a new file is opened.

Thanks for the help!

 

[Peter Atherton]

TJ

Harland Grove posted about this last week and I'm afraid
that you can't turn the option off.

You will have to insert a space (or a apostrophe) before
the original data so that "01-05" becomes " 01-05"
or "'01-05"

Another option maybe to create a template with appropriate
columns formatted as text and get the other application to
use this template.

Regards
Peter Atherton