Aggressive date auto-detection during import overrides Text column setting

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Hi,

I am facing an issue when importing data into Grist. I have a column containing text strings like 0354-05 (which represent specific references).

Grist’s parser aggressively auto-detects this format as a date (YYYY-MM) and automatically converts it to 0354-05-01 by appending the first day of the month.

The core problem is that my dataset also contains actual values like 0354-05-01 and 0354-05-02. Because of this auto-conversion, it becomes impossible to differentiate the original 0354-05 from 0354-05-01 after the import.

What I have already tried without success:

  1. Importing into an existing table where the destination column is explicitly set to Text. Grist still converts the value to a date before inserting it.

  2. Using str() in a formula. This doesn’t work because the original 0354-05 string is already lost during the import process.

My questions are:

  • Is there any way or workaround to strictly force Grist to read an imported column as plain text and bypass this date auto-detection (similar to the import settings in LibreOffice Calc)?

  • Alternatively, is there a specific function or internal property that allows retrieving the raw text string exactly as the parser initially read it from the file, before it applied any date conversion?

Thank you for your help.