A little more clarification on the problem
It is a fixed length text file -- let assum 10 chars per field, 2 fields
123456789|1234567890|
Muehe ABC
Muehe ABC

I mark off the fields, i specify that both are text fields (not general)
The second fields are not equal because of the leading spaces -- excel 2007
did not preserve the spaces. Doing the same process in excel 2003, worked.