The difference is one's numeric the other text, by putting a single quote in
front you are telling Excel to store as text string.

Use format to change the display method, the cell normally defaults to
'general' which means for numerical entries the display changes to suit the
size of the cell, so an overflowing number will show in Scientific format,
if it didn't then the cell would show a series of hashes (#). You can
change the cell format using the following (not exhaustive).

Range("A1").NumberFormat = "0"
Range("A1").NumberFormat = "0.E+00"
Range("A1").NumberFormat = "General"


Cheers
Nigel

"mike allen" wrote in message
...
i am faguely familiar w/ the "E" notation in math (scientific format?),
but
it is causing me a problem and i need to know how to re-fomat a number to
NOT imply to be an "E" number. i asked a question earlier about "if it
looks like it is a match, it is a match." well, i found out the problem
and
it is when an field (nothing to do w/ math, science...) is brought in to a
spreadsheet and it fits the profile that can be reduced to scientific
(6E+02), excel does it. that messes everything up, though. TRY THIS
OUT...

type in 6004665102 in cell A1 (set column width = 7.5 w/ times new roman
at
size 10 to see this ugly transformation to scientific). then type in
'6004665102 in cell B1 (must start w/ the hyphen to eliminate
transformation
to scientific format; also can set column width if you like). set both
cells to format--cells--general just so we are on even playing field.
write code:
Sub scientificjunk()
If Range("a1") = Range("b1") Then
MsgBox "they match!"
Else
MsgBox "something's wrong."
End If
End Sub

you can use: trim(B1) or B1.value, etc. all you want in code, but you
can't
touch A1 since A1 is ultimately part of large array brought in (maybe in
text, maybe in html...). can you get it to say "they match!"? without
touching cell A1 in spreadsheet or qualifying range("a1") in the code.
my main goal: how can i NOT have A1 revert to scientific when downloaded?
good luck, mike allen