Some Cells display text others dates in the same column

[Ragtime Phil]

I imported a .csv file into Excel. One column contains the SKU # of a
product. All my SKU's are formatted as x-xxxx. However some of the cells in
the column display the SKU as it should, but many (45 out of 170) are
displayed as a date format mmm-yy. Each one of the 45 is different. The cells
in question show up as "custom" and when I try to change it to "text" I get a
completey different number than the SKU I need. Somebody please help.

 

[Shane Devenshire]

Hi Phil,

Format the entire column manually, choose Format, Cells, Number tab, Custom
and enter #-#### in the Type box and hit OK.

 

[Ragtime Phil]

Hi Shane,

Thank you for repsonse.

I tried this and all I got was 45 cells that showed x-xxxx. The balance of
the cells were unchanged and displayed the actual SKUs.

I know I can do each cell by enetering the proper SKUs but these 45 are just
the start of a product list of over 4000. If the ratio holds true I'd be
dealing with over 1000 cells. Not a task I would look forward to

I seem to remeber this problem a number of years ago and somehow I solved
it. I was using Office 2003 at the time. Now I'm on Office 2007. I can't
remember how I did it. I only remember that it was a batch change and the
Dates changed to the actual characters I originally entered.

I also checked the field format of the database (File Maker) that I exported
from and it checks out OK.

Thanks for your help