I am trying to write a file from another system that will be opened with Excel

If the fields have quotes around them and are TAB separated then it is
pretty easy to get Excel to read it. Some of the fields have values that
look like numbers but really should be treated as text (They are Hex with
leading zeros)

I know that you can use the wizard when you open the file and select the
column and say it is type text. But the people opening the files will fail
to follow dirrections 9 of 10 times if they bother to read them at all.

I thought putting a leading single quote in the field whould make it open as
text but it displays the quote.

Is there anything that can be put in the file to maintain the format while
not displaying in Excel?

TIA
Peter Richardson