How to tell Excel not to evaluate a formula?

Is it possible to tell Excel not to evaluate a cell as a formula?

Example cell entry: -A23

Excel wants to evaluate this as reference to a cell. But the data I am working with has another semantics and is no reference to a cell. How to tell Excel to leave these entries as they are?

Solution 1:

An alternate to what mehow said (if you have only a few instances like this), you can prepend a single quote:

'-A23

Putting this in a cell will appear as -A23.

Solution 2:

Format the cell as Text

Right-click the cell and select Format Cells

then in pop-up window select formatting as Text

Now, enter anything you like in that cell

example (look at the formula bar)