Forum Discussion
How to Prevent Excel from Auto-Converting String to Date
Hello. I have some product data with product codes like "07-2772", "12-2773" etc. If you type these strings in Excel, it'll automatically convert "07-2772" to Jul-72 and "12-2773" to Dec-73 as dates....
Alternatively, format the cells as Text before entering data.
Thank you Hans. The problem is that I'm not entering data. I download the data from online and then directly open the file with data in it. When it opens, it automatically reads those data as dates. Any work around in this situation?
What kind of file is it? .csv, .txt, .xslx, ...?
It's downloaded as csv (only option), and I open it up in Excel.
Instead of double-clicking the .csv file, open it from within Excel.
This should activate the Text Import Wizard.
In Step 3 of this wizard, you can specify that some columns must be treated as text.