How to Stop Microsoft Excel From Auto Correcting Numbers into Dates

[semazol]

god bless you, i had so much pain in the ass with it

[jasonneely]

Thank you!!! This solved my problem. For others that stumble here I can attest that "Importing" the CSV file works. For a little more clarity in Excel 2010:
-Open blank workbook
-Click "Data" tab
-Click whatever source you want to import from (for me it was "From text" for my CSV file)
-set your options as J Burke described and you are done.

[mpmp]

How do you apply this so that when you open say a .tsv or .csv it will do this automatically.
I have several test machines here, some open the files OK, other convert it to date and trash the data.

[valeriejokela]

OMG...I'm so thankful for the video right now...thank

[alvydasjokubauskas]

how to make it default? I download an excel file from internet and it takes tons of time to fix every data, HOW TO PREVENT IT!!!!????

[nannycrackers]

Thanks very much, you're a good man. I must have visited 5 different websites with solutions to this problem, none of which worked. How can even microsoft get the explanation of such a simple fix wrong? thanks again

[RaiseOurVibes]

OMGoodness, THANK YOU!!!  I was about to freak out.

[OneMinuteGeek]

Hmm... here is the only solution that I can think of right now. Import the file instead of opening the .csv or .tsv file directly into Excel. When importing the file, choose delimited, choose whether tab or comma delimited, then select the column that has the data that becomes corrupted and change the column data format from general to text. Click finish. Once imported and everything looks fine, save the file in excel format to prevent further changes to the data. Let me know how it goes.

[fridrikreynisson]

thanks !! i was registering soccer results and this was driving me crazy

[xiheerzaizhanfan]

thank i also met this weird prob hahaha