disable auto conversion data to date-format when pasting

[CiscoAlvarez]

I have following problem:

I copy some data from webpage. the data are in format like this:

31 / 40
28 / 34
21 / 68
47 / 63
34 / 45
26 / 48
11 / 24
16 / 32

when I paste that to excel I get following:

31 / 40
28 / 34
21 / 68
47 / 63
34 / 45
26 / 48
2004-11-24
16 / 32

as I understeand excel by default tries to choose best format for dat
I paste. this is really annoying because it in reality changes data
paste - 11 / 24 is no longer 11 /24 - it is now 38315 <- the real wa
date data is stored and I can no longer get two first and two las
numbers as I would be able from 11 / 24

is there any way to disable that "auto-help"

 

[Guest]

Hi
try formating the cells as 'Text' before importing your data

 

[Dave Peterson]

Maybe you can paste into notepad. Then save that text file.

Then use File|open and open that text file. You'll be presented with a dialog
where you can specify each field (and you can avoid General and use Text
instead).