Formatting problem when importing text data from a csv file

Question

Hi,

I frequently import data into excel from csv files.  In my data, I have to represent specific string patterns like "1+2" and "1-4".  Everything with a "+" works just fine and excel formats these cells as "General".  However, anything that has a "-" is interpreted as a date.  So for "1-4" I get "4-Jan" in a cell with a "Date" format. Try it out, you'll see.

How can I change this so that excel doesn't try to interpret my strings as dates?

I tried to manually change the formats of these cells to "General" or "Text", but then I just get some uninterpretable number...excel seems to have no memory of what was in the original csv file.  So I can't even figure out how to fix this problem manually for a single cell.  Any help?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Change the extension from .csv to .txt.

This will cause the Text Import Wizard to appear when you open the file. In step 3, you will be able to specify that the column(s) have to be imported as text.

Answer 2

Thank you for the quick reply--what you suggested worked well.