James wrote to Bernard Liengme on Tue, 20 Feb 2007
09:55:39 -0500:

BL The problem is not converting to scientific. Even if the
BL 'numbers' stayed as General, the last few digits would be
BL converted to zeros since Excel has 15-digit precision. If
BL the 'numbers' are given to Excel as text then no
BL conversion will occur. best wishes

BL --
JS I wonder if some variant on custom formatting might work,
JS eg.
JS 00000000 00000000, the space is real?

Tried my own idea and you are right, 15 digits is the limit!
Will formatting cells as text help? I know you could enter very
long string of numbers into cells in such a column and have them
preserved. There would be complications if the actual numbers
were to be needed for calculation but tracking numbers would
probably be used as is and could be sorted if necessary.

James Silverton
Potomac, Maryland

E-mail, with obvious alterations:
not.jim.silverton.at.comcast.not