I am copying a table from MS Word 2007 to Excel. Some of the cells contain text such as 4:10. When I paste it in Excel it is automatically formatted as a time (10 past 4).

How do I stop Excel from automatically formatting when I paste? I have tried pre-formatting the cells as "text" but it does not help.

Edit the text by inserting a ' character before those strings. This can be done before copying, or after pasting.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

Format the cells you're going to paste to as Text before pasting.

That's what the OP says he's already doing:

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

Well, I missed that, but I had tried it anyway and it did work here!
Perhaps attach the Word document with the table and perhaps even the worrkbook here.

Attached is a small sample.
I 1) pre-formatted the area to "Text", 2) also tried Alt-F9

Attached Images

PasteTest.png (108.1 KB, 14 views)

Attached Files

	PasteTest.xlsx (9.2 KB, 5 views)
	PasteTest.docx (11.5 KB, 5 views)

If I copy the table from MS Word, paste it into Notepadd++ and then copy from there and paste into Excel the problem does not arise.

Bit of a round-about, but it works.

Thank you to everybody who tried to help.

Have you tried:

Box


or:
Box


?
Worked here.
Sorry the images are only links, couldn't upload images here.

Yes, made no difference...

Still preformatting the receiving cells to Text…

I have tried preformatting receiving cells to text, ALT-F9 in MS Word, Paste special, etc..... none of it works.

Very surprised!

I am thinking something went wrong with my MS Word installation. Perhaps I should reinstall.

I ran die MS Office diagnostics which picked up one problem which it corrected. When I now use Paste Special...Text it works fine. But the cells must also be preformatted as text.

Great!
Which app was at fault?