Formatting Numbes to Text

[ComputerLady143]

I have a spreadsheet that contains the following data:

Date Account ID
5/14/08 5280-3-01
5/14/08 5280-3-01
5/14/08 5280-3-01
5/14/08 5280-3-01
5/14/08 5280-3-01
5/14/08 5280-3-01
5/14/08 1030-0-01
5/14/08 1030-0-01
5/14/08 2101-0-01
5/14/08 2101-0-01
5/14/08 2101-0-01
5/14/08 2101-0-01
5/14/08 2101-0-01
5/14/08 2101-0-01
5/14/08 2101-0-01
5/14/08 2101-0-01


When I save it as a .csv file it looks like this:

Date Account ID
5/14/2008 3/1/5280
5/14/2008 3/1/5280
5/14/2008 3/1/5280
5/14/2008 3/1/5280
5/14/2008 3/1/5280
5/14/2008 3/1/5280
5/14/2008 1030-0-01
5/14/2008 1030-0-01
5/14/2008 2101-0-01
5/14/2008 2101-0-01
5/14/2008 2101-0-01
5/14/2008 2101-0-01
5/14/2008 2101-0-01
5/14/2008 2101-0-01
5/14/2008 2101-0-01
5/14/2008 2101-0-01


I have formatted it to Text, Number, and General etc. I have Copy the data
into a new spreadsheet, cleared all formatting. Tried this on two different
computers. No matter what it keeps changing the 2nd column to a data format.
Even though it doesn’t do it to the other account ID. I have imported this
stuff before and no problem. I am not importing into Excel.

 

[Bernard Liengme]

I put your data into a file - I had to format column B as text before
entering values like 5280-30-01
Saved the file as CSV
In Notepad (also Wordpad and Word) all the second values appeared correctly
( 5280-30-01) but the first few converted to dates when I open it in Excel
What app are you using to open the file? What Excel version?
best wishes