large numbers going from XLS to CSV

J

Jimv

I am trying to save an excell file as a .csv file. I have one cell that
contains a 16 digit number and it wont save as text. It turns into "7777+15".
How can I get it to save correctly.

thanks

Jim
 
D

Dave Peterson

If you open the .CSV file in Notepad, I bet your 16 digits show up nicely.

But if you reopen that file in excel, excel will try to make that field
numeric--and excel only supports 15 significant digits. (and will format it in
scientific notation to boot.)

If you have to reopen it in excel, you can rename that .csv file to .txt. Then
when you do File|open, you'll see the data import wizard. You'll be able to
specify that this field be text and your 16 digits will be kept nicely.
 
F

Fred

Have you tried to convert this number to text with TEXT() ?
If your data is in A1, let B1 be TEXT(A1;"###############").

"Jimv" escreveu:
 
J

Jimv

Yes, thanks I have tried to convert it to text.
Let me reword my question. The problem happens when I save it as a .csv to
be imported into a data base. The .csv is not seeing all 16 digits even if I
change it to text in excel. So the result is the information does not get
imported.
Any thoughts?

Thanks again

Jim
 
D

Dave Peterson

If the cell was formatted as text, then you typed in that 16 digit number, then
saved to a .csv, did you see all 16 digits when you looked at the file using
notepad?

Reimporting the file into excel will cause the trouble you see.
 
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