# A probably-stupid Excel question

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-probably-stupid-excel-question/301343>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [April 27, 2005, 11:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-probably-stupid-excel-question/301343 "2005-04-27T11:31:20Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\
**Post date:** [April 27, 2005, 11:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-probably-stupid-excel-question/301343/1 "2005-04-27T11:31:20Z")

</div>

I’ve got a whole column of cells conatining text in the format “2013/5/4” (they’re just reference numbers, nothing involving calculations or formulas). I’m trying to do find-&-replaces on these, but Excel keeps on deciding that because they _look_ like dates, they need converting to British date format and everything gets changed to “04/05/2013”. How can I stop this happening? (Format - Cells - Text hasn’t helped.)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Giles](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/giles/32/60_2.png) [@Giles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giles)\
**Post date:** [April 27, 2005, 11:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-probably-stupid-excel-question/301343/2 "2005-04-27T11:36:01Z")

</div>

Before you copy stuff like that into them, you need to tell Excel that the cells will contain text by formatting the empty cells as text (perhaps formatting the whole column as text). Then use the “Paste Special” function to specify that you want to paste the data as “Text” or “Unicode Text”.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\
**Post date:** [April 27, 2005, 12:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-probably-stupid-excel-question/301343/3 "2005-04-27T12:02:37Z")

</div>

If you prefix the replace value with an apostrophe, it should force the value to be treated as text, I think.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\
**Post date:** [April 27, 2005, 12:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-probably-stupid-excel-question/301343/4 "2005-04-27T12:13:48Z")

</div>

> [@Giles](#):
>
> Before you copy stuff like that into them, you need to tell Excel that the cells will contain text by formatting the empty cells as text (perhaps formatting the whole column as text). Then use the “Paste Special” function to specify that you want to paste the data as “Text” or “Unicode Text”.

This didn’t work - there’s no option for that in Paste Special (this is on Excel 2000).

> [@Mangetout](#):
>
> If you prefix the replace value with an apostrophe, it should force the value to be treated as text, I think.

That worked - although with a ‘z’ rather than an apostrophe, which got treated as a wildcard when I try to find&replace to remove it afterwards!

Thanks to both of you.