Hi Rustom,
You replied to Ron's answer but your answer looks more like a
someone else giving a "me too" reply to an original poster,
which never accomplishes anything but even more confusing
is that you were the original poster.
There have been changes in Excel in this area, and because
of this it would be important to include what version of Excel
you are using, the file extension.
When you answer Ron's question you have to say what happened,
we can't guess -- well we can but it takes a heck of lot more work
to get more information if you don't supply it.
Because you said it is giving you dates, we know that you
are getting the data into the correct columns.
The file open wizard kicks in if the file is not an Excel file.
Basically .csv file is the extension for text files to look like
a spreadsheet (comma delimited, but you can specify what
delimiter was actually used). -OR- .txt file.
Columns are separated based on a delimitor or their position
in the line. (one or the other) If you had a .csv file you would
not have had this choice and might not understand Ron's answer..
If the file extension is .csv then change it to .txt because
Excel will make it's own assumptions as to what your data
is and you can't override it.
The file open wizard and the Data, Text to columns wizard are
the same. If the data is already in Excel and all in one column
you use Text to Columns wizard.
When you see the 3rd dialog come up you see columns with
"General" across the top of each column. You want to change
those that should be text to text by selecting the column and
the Text from the buttons at the right. Otherwise Excel will
consider those cells to be dates.
Problems used to be a lot worse when people would paste
fractional prices from Yahoo Stock Quotes and they get
converted to dates, but now that stocks are reported with
decimals instead of fractions that has helped a lot.
Another solution might be to change your input data by
changing the "-" to some other character and when
finished format the columns as text and use Ctrl+H
to change the character back to a hyphen.
First suggestion of Ron's applies to the worksheet being
updated. Something to try but it usually doesn't work.
Ron's second suggestion is the important one.
If this answer still doesn't work out. What are you
copying from, do you see the wizard come up, do you
know what the import or text to column wizard is;
and of course what version of Excel..
