XL has to have some way of guessing whether 03/06 means (a) the 3rd of
June (in the current year), (b) the 6th of March (again in the current
year), and (c) March of 2006.

By default, XL will try to resolve ambiguous dates such as you're
entering as mm/dd (or dd/mm, depending on your system settings) of the
current year. If that doesn't make sense (e.g., 1/45), then it will try
to resolve it as a mm/yy if it can.

See XL Help "About dates and date systems" for the rules XL uses to
interpret ambiguous dates and how to customize them.

You mean it goes to current year?

You have not given Excel enough information.

It assumes you mean Mar 06 of current year when you type 03/06

Add the year also when entering dates.............03/06/07

If you mean you just want 03/06 to reamin as text and not a date, pre-format the
cells as text or preced the entry with an apostrophe which will not show in the
cell.

Gord Dibben  MS Excel MVP