The amount of time I have wasted dealing with this in the past, and no doubt in the future, is much greater than I would like to admit. It highlighted the impor

The amount of time I have wasted dealing with this in the past, and no doubt in the future, is much greater than I would like to admit. It highlighted the importance of plain text csv/tsv files and regular file backup/duplications. In my opinion Excel should be avoided at all costs when doing the majority of analyses, however for ease of use and data linkage sometimes it can't be avoided. However, I don't understand why Excel wont allow the user to set a standard format for blank cells (i.e. plain text) and maintain that format until the end of time, unless the user specifically resets it. Select all, format cell before pasting data into a sheet should work as expected. However, formatting is ignored as soon as anything is pasted into the spreadsheet. I can't help but find this ridiculous. Is that too much to ask for? Is this behaviour more convoluted to implement or are there unforeseen consequences that are beyond me?