How do I turn off the automatic conversion to dates?

I have often copied tabells to Excel which contained spanned values like
"4-8" and such and I have found no way to stop Excel from turning it inot a
date and no way of converting it back without it just returning the value of
the date. Not even preconfigure the page to text work for me.
For that I want to turn off the function of converting to dates all to
gether since i rarely or ever use it but frequently use spanned values and
don't like having to write a citation mark before and after or preformat the
cell.
Hoping for a quick answer...

Format the page as text and then 'paste special' as 'values' from wherever your
data is coming from.

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Regards
Ken....................... Microsoft MVP - Excel
Sys Spec - Win XP Pro / XL 97/00/02/03

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It's easier to beg forgiveness than ask permission :-)
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"St Lemon" St wrote in message
...
I have often copied tabells to Excel which contained spanned values like
"4-8" and such and I have found no way to stop Excel from turning it inot a
date and no way of converting it back without it just returning the value of
the date. Not even preconfigure the page to text work for me.
For that I want to turn off the function of converting to dates all to
gether since i rarely or ever use it but frequently use spanned values and
don't like having to write a citation mark before and after or preformat the
cell.
Hoping for a quick answer...


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