Microsoft Excel includes a powerful feature called “Data Types” that can intelligently convert text—such as the names of cities, states, or companies—into interactive objects linked to live online data. When you type a recognized geographic location (like “Chicago” or “Paris”), Excel often displays a small popup card or a little icon next to the cell, prompting you to convert the text into a Geography Data Type.
While this is useful if you are building a dashboard that requires live population metrics or stock prices, it is incredibly annoying if you are simply typing addresses for a mailing list or creating a standard budget sheet. The popup is distracting and can accidentally be clicked, altering your data.
If you prefer Excel to treat text strictly as plain text, you can disable these automatic Data Type suggestions.
How to Turn Off Data Type Popups
You can easily disable this proactive behavior in the Excel Options menu:
- Open Microsoft Excel on your computer.
- Click on File in the top-left corner of the ribbon menu.
- Click Options at the bottom of the left sidebar.
- In the Excel Options window, select Data from the left-hand navigation pane.
- Scroll down to the section labeled Automatic Data Conversion.
- Look for the checkbox labeled Show Data Types cards automatically when typing (or similar phrasing, depending on your exact version of Microsoft 365).
- Uncheck the box.
- Click OK at the bottom of the window to apply your changes.
From now on, you can type city names, countries, stock tickers, or company names, and Excel will simply treat them as standard text strings. If you ever do want to use the Data Types feature, you can still manually select a cell and click the “Data Types” button on the Data tab of the ribbon.