Pasting web tables into Excel - help needed!

[Riorin]

I copy/paste web table from IExplorer.

The table contains many numeric values, all with 2 decimal spots, for example 1.20, 3.40, 5.60 etc. - standard European way of displaying odds on sporting events.

The problem is that these tables pasted in Excel instead of showing numeric values convert all those 1.20, 3.40 numbers into dates and I get jan.06, mar.40 etc.

The same table pasted into Word leaves the numbers formated as they are in IExplorer!

So my question is Can I paste that table in Excel and have Excel keep the numbers instead of converting them to dates?

[wjohnson]

Select your worksheet and format all cells (or the number of columns you need) for the insertion of the document. Then when you paste - right click and select PASTE SPECIAL and select TEXT.
The auto-formatting of a cell to a date - has caused me alot of extra effort at various times.
One of the real downers with Excel - is it tries to be too helpful and a lot of times it thinks it knows what I want - I wish there was away to turn-off ALL auto-formatting.

[Carim]

Hi,

May I just warn you about common "cleaning" problems you will encounter ...
numbers will have to be trimed and formatted
all cells will need no fill color, no borders
all hyperlinks will have to be removed

HTH
Carim