Unwanted Date Conversion using DDE

I have a DDE server written in VB which returns data to subscribed Excel cells. I return the data using the CF_TEXT clipboard format (separating the contents of each cell by using tab and control/linefeed characters).

My problem is, whenever I try to return a date value, for example, 25/04/01, as part of the string Excel seems to apply an implicit DATEVALUE() function call on it, converting it to its corresponding value, in this case 37006.

Is there any way to actually prevent this from happening considering the string that is leaving the DDE server is along the lines of:

"Text1" & vbTab & "25/04/01" & vbTab "23"

which gets displayed in three successive Excel cells as:

Text1
37006
23

Thanks,
Steve.