On Monday, November 1, 2004 at 11:48:04 AM UTC-4, CR-Tech wrote:
Crystal Enterprise is the web-based front-end server which displays
stored/linked Crystal reports to my target audience. I use an export
function that sends the report data to a .csv file so my users can open and
manipulate it in Excel. The file I'm trying to create MUST maintain the
data types of the underlying data fields, but currently is not retaining
leading zeros.

Leading zeros in various fields (ID#/SSN, Zip Codes, etc.) are not
recognized and retained by Excel because it seems the incoming field data is
seen as numerical instead of text. Using known pre-Excel formatting tricks
employing various combinations of using an apostrophe before the data,
enclosing the data in quotation marks (before and after), and using space(s)
in combination with the ' or " characters proves ineffective.

I am trying to correctly force-format the data containing leading zeros as
TEXT, BEFORE it reaches Excel, in order to retain these leading zeros.

Please offer assistance or solutions. Your help is most appreciated.
Thanks.

If I'm not mistaken you can instead of adding the field into the report you
can create a formula field with a "ToText({fieldname})" type of language and
add that to your report instead. This will ensure the data is pulled into the
Crystal Report as text and should export in the same manner.

IMO, the import functionality in Excel basically isn't as efficient as it could
be! That said, I prefer to use VBA to import data into pre-formatted tables.
(Only requires a single mouse click rather than all the nonsense associated
with using the Import Wizard!) This ensures the data 'type' for table fields is
what I want/need it to be...

--
Garry

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