how can i make excel stop putting numbers as dates?

[Lynx]

i work with alot of Imperial and Metric dimensions for products, but it seems
that excel does not realy like imperial measurements. Let Us say that i ahve
a screw that is 5/8 inches long. if i put that into a cell, even formatted as
text, it will still change it to 05-Aug. same with countless other
Dimensions. I've searched high and low on how to fix this, but i cannot. I
am copieing a Large set of dimensions, and about half of them turn into
dates. any insight on how to fix this would be great.

 

[Kassie]

Hi Lynx

I have read that if you precede a fraction with "? ", Excel will see it as
5/8("), iso as 05-Aug. This is not true on Excel 2003 though. What does
work in 2003 , is to precede the fraction with "0 ". It then shows it as 0
5/8. Not sure this is what you need though!

 

[Kassie]

Sorry, that should read, if you insert "0 " before 5/8, it will read 5/8