Stop Excel from automatically converting certain text values to dates

Question

Does anyone happen to know if there is a token I can add to my csv for a certain field so Excel doesn\'t try to convert it to a date?

I\'m trying to write a .csv fil

Answer 1

(EXCEL 2007 and later)

How to force excel not to "detect" date formats without editing the source file

Either:

• rename the file as .txt
• If you can't do that, instead of opening the CSV file directly in excel, create a new workbook then go to
  Data > Get external data > From Text
  and select your CSV.

Either way, you will be presented with import options, simply select each column containing dates and tell excel to format as "text" not "general".