Turn off automatic date formatting

[jwt]

I'm pasting data into an Excel spreadsheet which is formatted as W-L-T, i.e.
1-0-2. Excel very handily insists that I'm trying to paste in a date, even
though most of the values clearly aren't valid dates (which values Excel
leaves alone). Other than writing a formula to figure out where Excel has
outsmarted itself, is there a way to turn this "feature" off?

 

[Mike]

Format the cells as Text.
You can do this by doing a right click on a cell or an entire column. Then
choose fomat cells. In the Category choose Text

Should work

 

[jwt]

Thanks but this doesn't work. When I make the format text teh entries that
Excel thought were dates gets formatted as teh numerical value.

 

[Gord Dibben]

I think what Mike missed was to pre-format the cells as Text BEFORE your paste.

That usually works.


Gord Dibben MS Excel MVP

 

[David McRitchie]

Also depends on where the data came from, if it came from
Excel as a number the format will also be copied, overriding
the text format.

But as Gord indicates you cannot change the format from number to text,
or from text to number for the data that is already entered.