At work we deal with certain products and their traditional naming structure
consists of:

000/00a-a00a

Although not all of those values may be present, i.e.:

18/1a-1z

211/13-p12

These identifiers pre-date the existence of Microsoft, let alone Windows and
Office, so it's not like we can go back and change these identifiers,
especially as they're controlled by an external third-party.

The problem is that Excel will sometimes "recognise" these identifiers as
possible dates and convert them, when pasting from other sources and so on;
is there any way to stop Excel from doing this automatic correction, as it
becomes extremely time consuming when dealing with large lists?