Turning off auto date formatting

How can I turn off the auto date formatting function in
Excel? I'm dragging data in from another application and
Excel is converting some of the data (i.e. 01-05) into
dates. I can't modify the cell formats before pasting
because the other application launches a new file as part
of the paste operation (which uses the default cell
formats). Therefore, I need to turn off the auto date
format feature so it will be off when a new file is opened.

Thanks for the help!

TJ

Harland Grove posted about this last week and I'm afraid
that you can't turn the option off.

You will have to insert a space (or a apostrophe) before
the original data so that "01-05" becomes " 01-05"
or "'01-05"

Another option maybe to create a template with appropriate
columns formatted as text and get the other application to
use this template.

Regards
Peter Atherton
-----Original Message-----
How can I turn off the auto date formatting function in
Excel? I'm dragging data in from another application and
Excel is converting some of the data (i.e. 01-05) into
dates. I can't modify the cell formats before pasting
because the other application launches a new file as part
of the paste operation (which uses the default cell
formats). Therefore, I need to turn off the auto date
format feature so it will be off when a new file is
opened.

Thanks for the help!

.