public interface ExcelPasting

Copy and Paste with Excel

DataSource.recordsAsText() can export a set of DataSource records in tab-separated-values format so that it can be copied and pasted into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.

However, be aware that Excel does a bunch of type guessing on pasted data:

values that look like dates (eg 1-2-2011 and even just 1-2) will become true date-valued cells (as indicated by Excel rendering them as eg 2-Jan). Note that the month-day-year interpretation is locale-dependent so be sure text is exported
values that look numeric, eg "5.0" become true number values (as indicated by Excel showing just "5")
values that look like times, eg "5:30", will be converted to times (as indicated by Excel showing 5:30:00 AM when editing the value)
values with a leading "=" will be treated as formulas

Unfortunately, when these behaviors are undesirable, there is no means of turning them off that doesn't have any drawbacks. You can:

adding a leading space or other char (but this changes the cell value).
turning the cell into a trivial formula, eg ="literal value". But this means that when the cell is edited, it's value is a formula.
format the cells as text in Excel before pasting data onto them

The first or second approach can be enabled when exporting text - see DataSource.recordsAsText() and DataSourceField.exportForceText.

Interface ExcelPasting

Copy and Paste with Excel