I have a formated text files. I open it in excel and deal with its column
data with excel functions. but aften I saved and exit from excel. I found
the column ID data hase been changed, from 2005360102017100321 to 2.01E+18.
I guess it is made by excel automatic function. who could tell me how I can
disable the excel automatic function when I open a formated text with
2005360102017100321 column?

thanks

hui

If you save the file as a normal workbook (*.xls), then you won't have a
problem.

But if you save it as text (.txt, .prn, .csv), then the next time you open it in
excel, you'll have to do something special.

If you saved as .csv, then rename it to .txt (.csv files have minds of their
own!)

Then File|open your .txt/.prn file.
You'll see the text import wizard pop up.

You'll be able to choose delimited or fixed width. After you decide what you
want, you'll be able to specify each field.

For strings like this, you'll want to choose Text.
(Excel only keeps track of 15 significant digits.)

==
There is no way to disable what excel does automatically--you just have to
specify what you want.

And if you do this lots of times and the format of the text file is always the
same, you could record a macro when you do it manually. Then just rerun the
macro when you want to import it again.

hui wrote:
>
> I have a formated text files. I open it in excel and deal with its column
> data with excel functions. but aften I saved and exit from excel. I found
> the column ID data hase been changed, from 2005360102017100321 to 2.01E+18.
> I guess it is made by excel automatic function. who could tell me how I can
> disable the excel automatic function when I open a formated text with
> 2005360102017100321 column?
>
> thanks
>
> hui

--

Dave Peterson