The easiest way to format the entire worksheet is to click on the top left
corner i.e. left of Col A and above row 1. This selects the entire
worksheet. Once selected you can format all cell as text then they will not
give a date when you enter your data of 3-1.
You must do this before you enter data as a date is really a number as far
as Excel is concerned.


"Coen" wrote:

When I enter "3-1" in a cell, Excel changes this automatically to "3-jan". If
I then manually change the format of the cell to text, the content of the
cell changes to "37989", not the original "3-1".

How do I switch off this automatic formatting?

Thanks for any suggestions...