It was worth a shot :) You can make a script to do it all for you. Pretty hacky but hey sometimes you have to script around Maya's bugs. polyTriangulate -ch 1; ExportSelection;evalDeferred "undo"; This will triangulate your selection, take you to your export menu (just leave Triangulate unchecked), then after exporting it…
Hey, thanks for the quick reply Bartalon! much appreciated. Unfortunately I have tried both the things you mention and neither worked:( Also the problem is I don't really want to do that every time I export (although I could whack it in an export script).