I don't think it could be turned off... As you yourself mentioned, the only
option is to mark the column as Text/numbers at the time of importing.

I am curious to know why you are not happy with the solution and want it to
be General format and still treat the values as Text?

"RRTRACKS77" wrote:

I am working with Excel 2007. Files exported from SAP to Excel often contain
text fields that get converted to dates.

Is there a way to turnoff Excels auto date conversion for cells with a
general format? I already know cells formatted as text do not convert to date
values and values entered in to a cell having a general format preceded with
an (€˜) will not be messed with. Neither of these points of information is of
any use in solving the problems I am having.

Using the startup workbook using both template and workbook formats in the XL
Start Folder to set the desired columns text format seemed like a good idea
but does not work either. The problem here is this does not change the format
of the default Workbooks created using the New Worksheet option. Is there a
way this setting can be changed? Or is there some other solution to this
problem? Any help on this would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Rich