How can I get Google Docs to stop formatting a form response as a date?

Question

I have a Google form with a question that contains a drop-down box with the following values:

• Fewer than 10
• 11-25
• 26-50
• More than 50

If the user selects "11-25", Google Docs renders the response data like this:

Under the formats dropdown in the toolbar, selecting "Plain Text" has the cell render as this date. Selecting "Normal" gives just "40,872", and selecting any other type of format gives "$ 40,872.00", "980928:00:00", and other various numbers that aren't anything like "11-25", depending on what option I choose.

The workaround is to change the form response option to "11-25 apples", or to recognize when manipulating my data that 11/25/2011 really means 11-25 apples. But is there a way to get Google Docs to stop turning "11-25" into a date?

Answer 1

You have to format the column in spreadsheet mode before any data is entered.

Here we have a form about waffles. The cells have been formatted before sending it to the recipients.

And here is the result after a user fills out the result.

Answer 2

You can also put 3 - 5 instead of 3-5. It worked for me.