In fact no extension will work, basically anything but *.csv

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


"JLatham" <HelpFrom @ Jlathamsite.com.(removethis) wrote in message
...
To add to what Gary wrote - you can usually simply change the name of a
.csv
file to .txt and work with it as a text file that way. So if your source
says "I can't give you anything but a .csv file", try just changing the
name
after you receive it.

"Gary''s Student" wrote:

Hi Beth:

Arvi's approach is very good. Another trick is to control things when
the
data gets pulled in.

If possible, get the data as a text file with a .txt type rather than
.csv
When you open a .txt file in Excel, the Import Wizard will be invoked.
You
can tell the Wizard to treat that field as text.
--
Gary's Student


"BethP" wrote:

Thanks for the quick reply. It's so weird that I've never run in to
this
before!

If you pull in a list of data with 16-digit numbers, and perform a cell
format to set it all to text, by default it converts to scientific
formula.
Is there a way to keep this from happening without having to
concatenate
every line with an apostrophe? (We occasionally pull 1000 row x 30
column
spreadsheets with this kind of data, and it's often by techs who are
not all
that Excel savvy.)

Thanks again,
beth

"Gary''s Student" wrote:

Hi Beth:

This is not a new problem, it is an old limitation. Integer numbers
can
have 15 digits. If you need more than 15, just precede the value by
a single
quote (apostrophe) or format the cell as Text.
--
Gary's Student


"BethP" wrote:

We're seeing a problem in Excel that I've never come across. All
of the
machines that we're seeing this on just downloaded this month's
auto-update,
but I haven't looked yet to see if there were any Office fixes.
I'm
wondering if any of you are seeing this or might have a solution
for me.

We typically work with 16-digit credit card-style numbers, where
the entire
number is treated as text. Typically, trying to format the number
as text
results in scientific notation, so I usually leave it as a number
with no
commas or decimals. However, no amount of formatting seems to
affect this
issue.

When I enter a number in to a cell, if it is longer then 15 digits,
any
number after 15 changes to a zero. You can see in the example I've
pasted
below where I was typing in all 4's ending with a 3, from 2 digits
to 17
digits long. Even if you go to edit the data, the last numbers have
been
changed to a 0, it's not just how the formatting is showing the
number.

43
443
4443
44443
444443
4444443
44444443
444444443
4444444443
44444444443
444444444443
4444444444443
44444444444443
444444444444443
4444444444444440
44444444444444400

Am I missing something? Help!

Thanks!!
beth