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Gord Dibben Gord Dibben is offline
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Default Why does excel turn numbers larger than 15 digits to zero?

Change the *.csv extension to *.txt

When opening, the Text to Columns Wizard will allow you to designate the data as
Text.


Gord Dibben MS Excel MVP

On Thu, 7 Dec 2006 14:57:01 -0800, Aaron
wrote:

Thank you for such a quick response Niek,

but... my group frequently deals with .csv files that when you open then, it
automatically sends the text to columns without allowing the option to turn
the long fields to text.

Is there an alternate way to open the file so it does not automatically send
text to columns without asking?

"Niek Otten" wrote:

Excel's numerical precision is 15 decimal digits.
If you need more, like for credit card numbers, format the cell as text before entering the "number" or precede the number by an
apostrophe (which will not show)
Note that you van not calculate with these text-"numbers"

--
Kind regards,

Niek Otten
Microsoft MVP - Excel

"Aaron" wrote in message ...
| When I type any number into excel that is greater than 15 digits, it turns
| all the remaining numbers to zero. For instance, if I enter 4444555566667777
| excel throws it into scientific format. When I turn it back to a number the
| number is now 4444555566667770.
|
| Any Idea why this is, and how I can make it stop?