Stopping Excel from reformatting data as a date?

[GW]

When entering data which could be seen to be a date, such as the characters
14/1 meaning Under 14 division 1 which is a soccer team, Excel overrides the
general format of the field and converts the data to date format. There are
many other instances where Microsoft feels it knows better than me the type
of data I am trying to enter. Is it possible to prevent this from happening?

 

[Fred Smith]

Precede the entry with an apostrophe, as in '14/1, or pre-format the cell(s)
as text before you enter data.

Regards,
Fred.