Preformat the cells as Text or start your entry with an apostrophe:

'12-2006



wrote:

Hi,

We have a Excel spreadsheet setup to allow file numbers to be entered
in a column in the format xx-xxxx where x is a number based on the
corresponding file number.
Up to a stage, these file numbers were accepted properly, but at a
point in time the column decided to format new entries as dates, and
the only way this can be fixed is via adding a single quote in front of
the number, which is labourious when we are talking many number of
records.
I have tried formatting the cells every which way, but cannot get the
numbers to display as anything but dates, is there a solution to this
problem that I have missed?
We are running Excel 2000 SP-3

Thanks in advance

Steve

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Dave Peterson