Now that's a new idea to me... I just tried it, and it worked - tedious for
sure, but hey, it's a lot faster than the way I used to do it. That helps a
lot. Thanks!!

"Peo Sjoblom" wrote:

Although this might be overkill, you can save it to a text file first, then
when you open it in excel
the text import wizard will pop up, then you can click next twice and
finally under column data format select text
and it will import as you expect it

--

Regards,

Peo Sjoblom


"jamezog" wrote in message
...
Thanks for the info. When entering manually, I use the apostrophe. I
can't
use apostrophes when I export a block of info from another program (such
as
QuickBooks) and paste it into Excel. I'll have to try preformatting
again.

"Peo Sjoblom" wrote:

There is no built in way to turn it off, I use either preformatting as
text
or
precede each entry with an apostrophe '
it will not be visible in the cell


--

Regards,

Peo Sjoblom


"jamezog" wrote in message
...
I am an accountant that uses Excel extensively in my work. On a very
regular
basis, I enter account numbers, often in formats that Excel is
programmed
to
recognize as dates, and as a result it frequently (and incorrectly)
reformats
the data I enter as a date. Now, when I'm posting hundreds of account
numbers from the clipboard, it is very time-consuming, not to mention
frustrating, to have to go back and manually correct each one.

Obviously, I can't just highlight the affected cells and change the
format
back, since the date format actually changes the data in the cell.
I've
also
tried "pre-formatting" the page as well, but have had little success.

I've searched extensively through Excel's menus, and have found no way
to
disable or override this autoformat feature. If there is a way to do
this
in
Excel 2003, I'd appreciate hearing about it. If there isn't, I think
it
would be a very helpful feature on a future version of Excel. I find
it
odd
that a program as powerful as Excel would have such a frustrating
quirk.