Opening tab-delimited files in Excel... how to stop the autoformat of dates?

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salamander - 28 Feb 2006 02:01 GMT

Hello,

I'm doing bioinformatics work in which I often download tab-delimite
files describing genomes and open them in Excel. Unfortunately, Exce
decides that genes with names like APR1 and SEP7 are actually dates
and reformats them as such. This is a huge headache, as I often don'
notice these problems until much later.

Is there anyway to completely disable this date autoformatting? I'v
searched high and low and have yet to find a solution.

Thanks!

P.S. I'm using Excel 200

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wjohnson - 28 Feb 2006 17:35 GMT

If you use the FILE OPEN option to bring you external file into EXCEL
In STEP 3 of the TEXT IMPORT WIZARD - you can define those columns a
TEXT and then EXCEL should not "change" those items to a DATE format.
If you copy and PASTE the file into EXCEL - and the information wil
"always" be in the same "columns" create an EXCEL Template - make thos
columns as "TEXT" and then save the "blank file" as "Yourfilename.xlt
then just double click on the xlt file - you will get a blank file
just like in WORD. This should work for you. You can also select the
number of columns you are going to use when importing - and then FORMA
CELLS - TEXT option, if you select the whole WORKSHEET and do this
then you need to reformat the CELLS as GENERAL if you are going t
enter formulas, etc. later

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