.csv Still Contains Some Type of Formatting That Changes Cell Values

[lmp884]

I am trying to save and upload thousands of UPC codes for my online store ... but I am not able to remove formatting or function (not sure what is causing issue) and the UPC code changes with save.

I've attempted to copy to MS Notepad, then back to excel. I've also just downloaded Notepad++ and get the same result.

Example UPC code: 840703110688 ... new column, manually typed in

Because of issues ... I click Home > Editing > Clear > Clear Formats and it immediately changes to: 8.40703E+11 -- but I can see the correct value in the function window. When I close the file, saved as .csv and reopen it I see 8.41E+11 in the cell and to click the cell I now see 840703000000.

Attempting this without using the clear formats results are the same.

How do I get the original UPC code to remain original number and not change???

Thanks in advance!

[candybg]

Try formatting as TEXT and see if it changes after saving and re-opening.

[MarvinP]

Hi lmp,

I wonder what your .csv file looks like? It must have commas in it, but does it also have quotes around the text fields? Does it look like:

"Bob", "Fred", "456", "25145", "Sam"
or
"Bob", "Fred", 456, 25145, "Sam"

If the quotes aren't around the numbers then Excel might think they are numbers instead of text.

Also, when you import the CSV file, you can specify how each column is treated. Do you import those columns of data as General or Text? If you chose General it will let Excel decide what they are by the first few rows of import, and keep it for the rest of the import process.

[lmp884]

I've tried General, Number, Text ... same issue. Text only changes the alignment.

[lmp884]

I actually put the numbers from Notepad into a blank excel file that was saved as .csv and opened to paste the numbers.

There are no quotes or commas.

Import aside ... I can manually type the numbers into a blank .csv file and it still happens.