Excel reading pasted values as Scientific Notation

[Brad Autry]

Hello,

My dilemma is as follows:

I'm exporting large tab delimited files from SAP for manipulation in Excel.
Many of the cost centers for this company are alphanumeric, but often using
the letter E, for whatever reason. Example: 000776E0000010. When brought
into Excel, it's viewing these as scientific notation and displaying the
value as 7.76E+12.

Once it's at this point, I can't try to change the cell format to text or
general because Excel has already registered the entry as 7760000000000.
I've tried copying and paste special as text, it still comes out as the
number.

Is there any way around this or am I screwed?

Many thanks in advance.

Brad

 

[Sean Timmons]

If you import the file by using the typical open in Excel and use the Text to
Columns feature, when you select your delimiter type, if yu click next, you
should also have an opportunity to select individual fields and set their
field types. Try changing the one below to Text prior to completing the
import.

 

[Dave Peterson]

Rename the .csv file to .txt and when you use file|open, you'll see the text to
columns wizard.

You'll be able to specify that this field is text.

Or keep the .csv file extension and use:
Data|import external data|import data (xl2003 menus)

You'll see that same text to columns wizard.

 

[rowbigred26]

Similar problem

I'm having a similar problem that can't be solved by changing the source format. I have a macro running that opens an html page and copies certain fields from that page onto my excel doc. One of the fields contains the following text 89677E104. When the macro pastes this text into excel, it automatically changes the format to scientific notation and this upsets other macros that use the copied information. I've tried formatting the cell as "text" prior to running the first macro, but excel decides to be "helpful" and change it back to scientific notation once it recognizes the "E" within the source text. Any ideas on how I can tell excel to stop being helpful and leave my source data alone?