Stop Excel 2007 auto format to date
 

Hi there

I hope someone can solve this issue. I regularly get datasets with columns of data similar to the following

1/10 red rep1
2/11 rep rep2

These are sample names which I use "text to Columns" to split by the space resulting in 3 columns. Excel automatically assumes the 1/10 is a date. I have read all threads where users are advised to pre format the cell as text which works well when inputting data; this does not however work when splitting a cell into more columns. There are work abounds which I use but I love to know if there's an option to turn this infuriating function off for good.