Now, make sure that your data is pasted as text.You can also press Cmd+1 to select 'Text' there and then click 'Ok.' Select the columns or cells you want to paste into and choose 'Text' in the format dropdown of the Home tab.The trick is to choose the format of the column before you enter or paste the data: So, how can you show a column with values like 12/2 without having them converted into dates? How to get around this in Excel If you then ask Excel to change the format to 'Text,' it shows you a weird high number like 44239. If you enter 12/2, it will change to 2-Dec or 12.

While this issue is not directly related to Datawrapper, it's a common problem with Excel that can be frustrating and time-consuming: Excel is trained to 'detect' formats, and sometimes the software wrongly assumes that a certain number represents a date.

Sometimes, importing data into spreadsheets can be a headache. Excel keeps changing my numbers into dates.