Prevent Excel from Changing Strings to Numbers

[Ambulare]

Hello!

I frequently use a system which provides serial numbers in the form "246B135" or similar but whenever I open this information in an Excel document, the "clever" autoformatting changes all the numbers with an "E" such as "246E02" into an exponential such as "2.46*10^4".

If I format the column as text, it becomes "24600" rather than "246E02". I do not enter the numbers myself so I can't add a comma at the start and there are too many of them to change manually.

Does anyone know how I can tell Excel to just leave them alone - that I actually want them to read "246E02" rather than "24600"? They need to stay in this format as I import them to a database which uses this serial number as a key.

Many thanks!

[martindwilson]

format cells as text BEFORE entering data its to late to do it afterwards

[Ambulare]

I do not enter the numbers myself

I'm afraid the data is exported from the source system as an Excel file - I can't change it.

[shg]

Then I think the damage has already been done.

Can you change the software that does the export?

[JBeaucaire]

Perhaps instead of OPENING the files directly, you can try importing the document. This would let you view each of the data columns and indicate how it should be read, in this case as TEXT, and by the time the data first appears you may have suppressed the problem.

Give it a try.