When you standard paste (cntl-v) onto a cell like that, you are pasting everything, including the format.

When you copy "2/4" from here, you are copying the text and the format though the format is a null (for lack of a better term). So when you standard paste, Excel enters the data and sees the null format. It then assumes date and formats it as such. It can be quite frustrating as you know. However, it is a time saver most of the time.

You can get around this with a special paste:
* Make sure the cells are preformatted as text.
* Copy the text.
* Click the dropdown below the Paste button. You will see two icon options. If you hover over each, they say
----Keep source formatting (M): this is the standard paste
----Match destination formatting (K): this is a text only paste


* Select the latter, and it will display the way you are looking for.

I'm not really sure what the letters in parentheses above signify. They don't appear to be shortcuts.

That does indeed prevent Excel from reformatting numbers into dates, but it also destroys the rest of the format and all text gets cramped into a single cell or awkwardly stretched with lots of empty cells between. Format is okay, I just don't want any no reformatting.

Thanks anyway, though. I guess there's just no way to turn off that stupid date formatting.

It's hard to say. Not having seen what you are trying to do, I don't know if there is any way to work around it. Post your file. Maybe fresh eyes will help.

Indeed, there is none that I know of. You would think there could be an option to disable it for a sheet, but perhaps it's more complicated than we can imagine to do so.