[WorldMaker]

In Excel have you tried selecting a row and select the Text or the Number type from the ribbon "Types" drop-down (oddly named the "Number" section of the Home ribbon tab because it was classically the "Number" tab of the Format Cells dialog, which still exists if you click the expando button on the ribbon section)? (I find it easier to select columns and set types by columns, but I don't know what your spreadsheets look like.) It doesn't "lock" the type and an editor can still change the type for an individual cell, but you can still set (and save) better default expectations.

(Text is the safe string format that isn't as "magic" as General, the default. It's also the type you get if you use the " prefix in General.)

It's interesting to note here that the weird "magic" of Excel's default General "type" is pretty directly VisiCalc's fault because they had similar types but wanted to keep entry "simple" and decided to just guess types as people wrote cells with a handful of special character prefixes to override types. That legacy will likely forever live on. Excel could name General "VisiCalc Backward Compatibility" and it wouldn't entirely be wrong.