Text field sorting as a date

Data type is "text". Values are three letters and three numbers. Eg: MED00, MED01, MED02.... The problem is when the three letters are an abbreviation for a month. It then sorrts: JAN99, JAN00, JAN01, BRO00, BRO01, etc. So the "JAN" values are at the top and the "99" comes before the "00".

How do I tell Excel these are alphanumeric values and NOT dates? (Office 365) I tried the old trick of adding an apostraphe at the beginning of the text, but that didn't work.