Excel enthusiastically and automatically types oh-so-many things. It'll take dates and assume they are in american MM/DD/YYYY in some fields and then treat dat

Excel enthusiastically and automatically types oh-so-many things. It'll take dates and assume they are in american MM/DD/YYYY in some fields and then treat dates in the same column like 13/01/1986 as strings. That exact problem I had when working with a company who had a stocked item with the code "060E2". When people don't know scientific notation the result is bewildering!!!