Removing formatting in excel

**adam.sellers** · 03-30-2009, 11:40 PM

I have an issue that has me quite frustrated at the moment, i hope someone can help me out there... I have a spreadsheet that has a list of what are part numbers for importing into our business system through another application. However, when the part number 3211140 is loaded into our import software, it lovingly appears as 3.21114+e006!!!!! Like i'm a nuclear physicist and just can't bear seeing zero at the end of a number.. :@ The source column on this is formatted to text, the values are all text but i have no idea how to stop this happening???? Can someone please help me????

**Paul** · 03-30-2009, 11:58 PM

Hi Adam,

Have you tried saving your excel file as a CSV before importing it into your business software? If you do that, and it still comes into your software in scientific notation, then I'd suggest Excel isn't the culprit.

**adam.sellers** · 03-31-2009, 12:53 AM

Thanks Paul, unfortunately the csv option (or delimeted text) aren't viable in this case as the import maps are designed for excel formatted files. Is there a way to remove all formatting from a sheet?

**Paul** · 03-31-2009, 01:32 AM

The only way I can think of would be to select the whole sheet and then format the cells as "General". I was actually surprised to hear that even formatted as Text it wasn't coming across as a non-scientific number.

**mubashir aziz** · 03-31-2009, 04:19 AM

Normally if there are some number which import from some database and now in text format then i copy / paste that column in ms word and when i paste it again in EXCEL it become Number ....... try it ....

**ranjanbs84** · 04-29-2010, 03:10 PM

To remove the scientific notation from excel,
1. When importing data from other application import it as csv or tab separated etc...
2. Ctrl A, copy entire data and paste it in excel first column.
3. In excel 2007, go to 'data' tab and select 'Text to Columns'
4. Select the appropriate delimiter
5. In step 3 select all the columns, you can do this by keeping shift key pressed and scroll to the last column and click on last column.
6. Now select 'column data format' as 'text' and press finish.

Voila!!! all the columns have warning indicating number being converted as text, but who cares as long as the scientific notation is gone.