Turning off all Automatic Formatting in Excel 2003
 

Hi

Is there any way of turning off all automatic formatting in Excel 2003?

For example Excel automatically changes strings such as 1-12 in a CSV file
to 1-Dec, 10-10-2005 to 10/10/2005 and strings of numbers to an exponential
representation. These changes are preserved when saving the file and thus
corrupting it, preventing any other applications from reading it.

I know you can import CSVs changing all the fields to text using the data
import option, however reopening it and saving causes Excel to make the same
changes again.

Any suggestions would be really appreciated as this is causing us real
problems.

Thanks.

Adam