Hello. I have an application that we export database data to an XML file.
We use an xsl style sheet to convert that to .html that the application or a
web page can use to display to the user. An option we allow for the users is
to convert the html document to excel for editing or converting to PDF. One
issue we have is that the document can contain text in the form of 05/12 or
0512 that we need to stay as text.

In the html document they are correct, however, excel turns them into dates
or numbers. I've tried putting the ' character in front of the string.
However, when excel gets the html, it puts it in (ex: '05/12) and doesn't
hide the ' character until the cell is clicked on and OKd (but this is not an
option as there are too many cells). I was wondering if there was some tag I
could put in the html document (via the style sheet) that would tell excel to
not format the numbers. Or if there was something I could put in the html
that would tell excel to turn off all formatting.

Excel 2002
Windows XP

Thanks. And if anyone needs more info let me know.

nellie.