setCellText()/setCellData()

Hi,

Am using a grid and setting the values using a 2D array via setCellData().
When I add a string to a cell with an @ symbol, this gets converted to a hyperlink. Is there a way to just display/store this as plain text without the HTML formatting? I tried using setCellText() after I went through an article posted here which suggested setCellText() to avoid formatting. But the problem still exists. Any thoughts?
I am new to this, started using active widgets only for 2 days now..