CSV - text

[pacificwaters]

I have "00012345" in a CSV file. when i open the CSV in excel, it comes up as
"12345".

WITHOUT adding the apostrophe "'00012345" , how else can i get it to display
the zeros in front of the numbers (because it's text, not numeric)?

and the users don't want to go into format->cells each time. any global
settings for this?

 

[Gary''s Student]

The problem is how you are openning the file.

If you double-click the icon or, from Excel, do:
File > Open

then Excel tries to "help" you by dropping leading zeros. Instead:

Data > Import External Data > Import Data

and then tell the Wizard that the field is text. The leading zeros will be
preserved.

Another method is to rename the file something other than .csv

 

[pacificwaters]

the users don't want to do the wizard every time and specify that each field
is text. we are working with alot of fields and this becomes very
inconvenient.
any other ways to easily set a global option so that we don't ever have to
perform these steps?

thanks for the reply.

 

[pacificwaters]

the users don't want to do the wizard and specify text for each field every
time. we are working with alot of fields and this becomes very inconvenient.
any easier way on setting a global option so that we don't ever have to
perform these steps?

thanks for the reply.

 

[David Biddulph]

No.
--
David Biddulph

the users don't want to do the wizard every time and specify that each
field
is text. we are working with alot of fields and this becomes very
inconvenient.
any other ways to easily set a global option so that we don't ever have to
perform these steps?

thanks for the reply.

 

[Bob I]

In that case open the file in Notepad and do a find and replace
"0 -> "'0

 

[Dave Peterson]

If your data is laid out exactly the way each time, you could rename the *.csv
file to *.txt and provide a macro that would open the file so that each field is
treated the way you want it.

Rename the file to .txt and record a macro when you open it and you'll have the
code.

If the format of the file varies, you may not be able to macro-ize it. It would
depend on that variation.