This is identical to issue 24185, but that issue was closed by FT on the basis
that "If the user wants to change [the current behavior] he has to format these
cells beforehand explicitly to 'Text'."

He must not have read my report very carefully because the whole issue is that
EXPLICITLY SETTING THE CELL FORMAT BEFOREHAND DOES NOT CORRECT THE PROBLEM! 
That is the problem that needs to be corrected!

A verbatim (aside from a spelling correction) copy of the original report is below.

*****************

I often create a table in Writer, then paste that table into a Calc spreadsheet,
so that I can use it as a data source in other Writer documents.

If any one of the cells I paste in has data like this, "12-17" (without the
quotes), Calc tries to interpret it as a date, and I wind up with "12/17/03", or
whatever the default date format is.

Selecting the relevant field and explicitly setting the formatting to plain text
(right click->format cells) does not help.  In fact, if I go through and adjust
the formatting for every cell that has gotten munged, then paste the number
range in again, it will get reformatted as a date again, despite the fact that I
am pasting the exact same data into the field as it already there.

In my particular case things like "10-17" are page or verse ranges, used when
citing a reference.  As soon as I get outside of possible date ranges (e.g.,
"107-145"), Calc stops munging things.