title: Stop Excel from converting Date to Number
body: <p>I have an Excel spreadsheet A.xls with 5 columns. One of the headers is Aug-15. When I change the <code>Aug</code> to <code>Sep</code> Excel re-formats to: <code>15-Sep</code>.</p>
  
  <p>When I click on General it shows a value of <code>42262</code> thus when I extract the cell-value using Python, it returns <code>42262</code>.</p>
  
  <p>How can I retain the formatting as Sep-15 so it returns <code>Sep-15</code>?<br>
  Where is it actually doing this conversion in Excel?</p>