How about a workaround?

Copy your data and paste into NotePad (or any text editor).
Save that file as *.txt.

Now open excel and use File|Open to open the .txt file. You should see the text
import wizard pop up that allows you to specify each field--and you can choose
Text for the field that looks like a date.

ajd wrote:

I'm having a problem with imported data automatically converting to dates. I
paste in some data from word which is automatically converted into columns.
One of the columns contains chapter-page number data such as 1-2, or 5-4,
etc. Excel automatically converts that to a date format, which then can't be
converted back to text except as the number corresponding to that date- such
as 38694, etc. The paste of the data overrides any preset "text" format for
those cells. How can I import the data without having it convert to a date?

Thanks.

--

Dave Peterson