stop changing data to date

[Sara]

When I type data ranging from 3-6 it automatically changes this to the date
of March 6 and that's not what I want. How do I stop this insanity?!

 

[JE McGimpsey]

either preformat the cell as Text (so that XL doesn't try to parse it),
or prefix the data with an apostrophe to indicate to the parser that
what follows is text:

'3-6