Stop Excel from converting Date to Number

Question

I have an Excel spreadsheet A.xls with 5 columns. One of the headers is Aug-15. When I change the Aug to Sep Excel re-formats to: 15-Sep.

When I click on General it shows a value of 42262 thus when I extract the cell-value using Python, it returns 42262.

How can I retain the formatting as Sep-15 so it returns Sep-15?
Where is it actually doing this conversion in Excel?

Solution 1

Just place an apostrophe at the beginning:

'Aug-15

The apostrophe will not display in the cell. It forces Excel to treat what follows at text.

Solution 2

Right click on the cell and go to format cells. There you can define the cell format.