SSIS keeps force changing excel source string to float

It appears there is no way to fix this issue. Excel looks at the first few rows of data in the column and will always FORCE the datatype to FLOAT no matter what. I was given a solution of creating a template with a few varchar characters in the first few rows (8+) so EXCEL will pick that up as the data type and then import my data. On thing that helped is since I am using Source Safe I am able to "Check In" a file so that it makes my package file "Read Only" so that Visual Studio can not change my pre defined data types.

Is it possible to get the file as a .csv file which can be imported like a text file and will not have this problem? I generally kick back all Excel files and ask for another format because SSIS and Excel do not play well together on many levels.