<aaron.kempf@gmail.com> wrote...
>the formatting doesn't work as advertised.

Yes it does, but you don't seem to understand the specs.

>how do i get rid of scientific notation in cells from excel?
....

Set the number format to something other than Scientific *OR* General. If
you use the General number format, you'll get numbers in scientific notation
when columns aren't wide enough to display in normal format. This is no
different from many other numeric applications that use a 'general' format
by default to display floating point reals.

>how do i import it into a database without having it cough?

Again, set the number format correctly, and you shouldn't have a problem. If
you do in some database, then the problem is in the *DATABASE*, not Excel,
so further bitching & moaning in this newsgroup would be OT.