Disabling automatic date formatting

[Frank Marousek]

I continually have problems with Excel insisting on automatically formatting
certain data as dates. For example, I frequently paste data into Excel that
looks like this:

4-5

and Excel insists on formatting it as a date.

I need to keep this data as 4-5 (text). How can I disable this
auto-formatting?

 

[Tom Ogilvy]

prior to entry, format the cells as Text (format=>Cells, pick numberformat
tab and select text).

or
put in the data prefaced by a single quote

'4-5

 

[Frank Marousek]

I have had that suggested to me previously and tried it, but it doesn't
work. Is there some setting somewhere which might make it behave differently
for me than for you? Also, this is data being pasted from a web page, if
that might matter.

I cannot preface the data by a single quote as it is data being cut and
pasted from a different source (web page).

Frank

 

[Tom Ogilvy]

Sorry, didn't pick up the "I am pasting".

I am not aware of a known solution for pasting.

 

[Frank Marousek]

Thank you Tom. It is very frustrating.