George

As soon as Excel gets near to it's 15 digit limit it will endeavour to
'convert' it to scientific notation

Formatting the cell in advance will stop this happening

In the latter case, changing the dashes to nothing makes Excel think they
are now numbers and don't therefore need a leading zero

To overcome both, try putting a leading apostrophe in front, it won't show,
but will be treated as text

--
HTH
Nick Hodge
Microsoft MVP - Excel
Southampton, England
DTHIS
www.nickhodge.co.uk


"George Applegate" wrote in message
...
What causes this:

Format a column as text
Enter into first cell 1257470
then next cell 12574700
then next cell 125747000
then next cell 1257470000
then next cell 12574700000
then next cell 125747000000, but it changes it to 1.25747E+11

What is going on with this???

Also, in a text cell, I enter

08-812000-02
then, go to edit replace and try to replace the '-' with nothing
but when it does, it changes the cell to 881200002 - it takes the
dashes, but it also takes off the leading zero???

WHY?

Any help with these two questions would be greatly appreciated.
ga

George Applegate