Reading Numbers as Strings from .csv file

**andrewlong** · 01-07-2010, 10:46 PM

I have a .csv file that contains numerical data in the form of strings, much of which starts with leading zeros (i.e. "012345"). I double checked to make sure the .csv file has the leading zeros and that they are wrapped in quotation marks in notepad, and it does. However, when Excel opens the file, it must read those strings as numbers, becuase it chops off the zeros. Does anyone know of way to fix this? Can Excel read numbers as strings straight from a .csv file?

**NBVC** · 01-07-2010, 10:56 PM

You'd have to save as .txt file instead, and then when you open that file, you have to go through the wizard, in the 3rd window select the column with numbers that you want to keep as text.. and select Text for the column data format area...

**Mikeopolo** · 01-07-2010, 10:57 PM

When Excel opens a csv file it processes it automatically, and displays numbers using a general format.

If you want to bring these fields in with leading zeros, you could change the file to a txt file (by changing the suffix), and then open it with Excel. This will bring up the text file wizard, which has options to treat the field as text. This will retain leading zeroes.

(Just pipped by the above!)

**andrewlong** · 01-07-2010, 11:06 PM

thanks for the help guys, it worked. However, I have to say that I also tried to open it in OpenOffice, and gives you that option without changing it to a text file first. I can't believe Microsoft is laggin behind a free piece of software.