I'd use a helper cell--not the whole column.

In fact, I'd use an empty cell
put something in it
then do that data|text to columns.
Then clean up that cell

That way, I'd avoid any unintended changes.

Al wrote:

Thank-you - that is the solution

In summary:

In order to prevent the automatic parsing of data when pasting into a olumn€¦
Click to select the entire column
Click Data
Click Text to Columns
Click Delimited then Click Next
Uncheck any Delimiters that are checked
Click Finish

Thank-you very much
Al
"Dave Peterson" wrote:

I think you'll find that excel has a very good memory and likes to help.

You can kill its memory by closing and reopening (yechhh!) or you can do a dummy
data|text to columns.

Just choose delimited, but uncheck each delimiter and finish up.

Then excel won't know what to do for the next time.



Al wrote:

I may have been to hasty in making this assumption, it appears that the
problem I described below is only happening on one workstation - this may
indicate that the Excel Registry keys are in need of a refresh - I will try
that and post back the results.

"Al" wrote:

Once I use the Text to columns feature in Excel, it seems there is no way to
turn it off.

Anyone know if there is a way to reset this so that newly pasted text will
not continue to get broken up (for example by the space delimiter)

Presently the only way is to exit Excel and restart Excel - then pasted text
all goes into one cell regardless of spaces.

Hope I explained that well enough

Al


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Dave Peterson


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Dave Peterson