title: Exporting from PHP to Excel - cell formatting
body: <p>I am exporting data from a database to an Excel file using PHP and a Codeigniter to_excel helper.</p>
  
  <p>Everything is working correctly, except I have a field that contains data in the format of <strong>1-1</strong>, <strong>2-1</strong> etc. When I open the file in Excel, Excel is automatically formatting this data as a date field so that it appears <strong>01-Jan</strong>, <strong>02-Jan</strong> etc.</p>
  
  <p>Is there a way to force Excel not to format this data as a date field?</p>
  
  <p>Thanks.</p>