Valid html output is copied to a file with an extension of .xls and
Excel is used to open it. It works just fine 99.9% of the time..
however.

Their is one td element being converted to a date: <td01-01</td

We've tried putting various quotes to signal this is text but no
success (the "hints" show up in the output). Is there a td attribute
that might help out here? The data cannot be changed and must appear
01-01 in the column. We cannot expect the client to configure their
Excel.

Thanks