Need help to disable Automatic Date formatting in Microsoft Excel

[LuniA]

I use Excel to display/sort tables of data arranged in columns. Some of ther columns are numeric, some are text. One of the columns is giving me a lot of hassle. It should contain names of genes, which Excel does okay, until you find names like "SEP7" or "MAR3", which Excel transforms into a date form, usually "Sep-07", but sometimes into a 5-digit number like "39326". I have cancelled every auto-correct and auto-format option I can think of, but no joy. The only thing that works is format the whole thing as text. Isn't there a way to avoid this "by default", so that Excel just shuts up and takes what I type in as I type it, without changing anything? If it's a number, it's a number, if not, it's text. It's very annoying, because I have these tables with tens of thousands of names, which I rearrange, merge, mix... when you import a column of names the names are changed without warning. I don't want Excel to guess anything for me. If you know how to turn off this "feature" that appears loaded by default, please let me know.

[Alfons]

The feature cannot be turned off. Your best bets are using Text format, as you mentioned, or preceding the entry with an apostrophe.

[Gania]

Try to look on Automatic Date formatting help in Microsoft Office help forums. There can be some issue with the code you are using.