That is how Excel works.

Format the cells as Text and Excel will not try to "help" you by changing
your data
--
Gary''s Student - gsnu200807


"JonathanHall" wrote:

When I type in the following characters 18E-259 in a cell it automatically
changes the format from General to Scientific. When that happens the
characters that were input are changed by Excel to 1.8E-258.

Can someone tell me why? I have to insert a ' prior to the input characters
in order to be able to have my input show up. And then it is tagged as an
error. I am curious why Excel changes the format to Scientific based on those
characters and why I get an error that has to be ignored.

Thanks for your help!

--
Jonathan Hall
The Atkins Group