Scientific Notation - I want excel to read it as a text not a numb

[Guest]

When I download a file from the internet, it gets saved as a *.csv file.
When I open it in Excel, I am having a problem with one column. It is a
reference column. For example a record might have the reference number
"24143236335900011300295" It seems Excel is automatically assuming this is a
number and it appears as 2.4143E22. How can I convert that to text?
Formatting the cells to "text" doesnt seem to be working. I am then
importing this file into an Access Database.

Thanks

 

[Dave Peterson]

Rename the .csv file to .txt

Then open that file in excel (via File|Open)

You'll see the text to columns wizard pop up. You can specify that this field
is Text.