>> In theory, importing from CSV, indeed, seems better to me. I also suspect > you can insert it into any place.
>
>> Try if you can pre-format the column, where you will insert the CSV, as text.
>
>As far as I can tell, opening a .CSV file in Excel always starts a new sheet so the pre-format of the columns as text is left unused on another sheet.
>
>Also, I should mention my previous post I accidently showed a space following the comma in my example .CSV file which must be omitted for the other columns to load properly.
>
>I am also considering adding the extra "=" prefix character only if I really need it to prevent the data conversion. Unfortunately, this could be an intensive effort since things like "7440-09-7" should never have been assumed to be a date. UGH! As a related question, is there any fast way test if a string contains any alpha character? So for example I would add the "=" prefix if I had a code like "7440-09-7" with dashes in positions that might be dates, but not for codes like "7A40-09-7" that had an alpha character.
>
>Thanks,
>Jeff

Yes, with chrtran() you can strip out digits and hyphens. If the len() remains > 0, it means you have a letter, in your example, an "A".

? len(chrtran("7A40-09-7", "0123456789-", "")) > 0