After you open the text file in Excel, the Text Import Wizard is displayed.
Choose the appropriate options for your file. In step 3 you can select the
columns with the numbers that are normally treated as dates and choose Text
under Column data format.

This setting applies to the whole column. It will format all dates and
numbers in that column as text.

If you paste the text into Excel and you use Excel 2002 or later, you can
use the Paste Options button to invoke the Text Import Wizard.

I have not found an option in Excel to stop the behavior in question.

--
Kristoffer Andreas Berg
Programmer on a hobby basis
http://home.online.no/~gunnarab


"artech" wrote:

When importing or pasting a text file with a non-date field that starts with
a 2 digit number and hyphen (05-99999, 06-99999) excel automatically converts
the entries to a date. I have tried turning off error checking but that did
not help.

If I pre-format the cells as text before the paste, it does not convert to
date. But when downloading I do not have this option. What feature do I need
to turn off?

Thank you