Hi, I'm exporting data to Excel from another software program. When the data
is in excel, there is one column that contains numbers and colons (e.g.
10:10:80). Unfortunately for me, Excel sees this as an improper date/time
entry and gives me a decimal number instead. Is there a way in Excel to get
the program to recognize it (10:10:80) as text rather than a general number
or date? I will eventually use text to column to get each number in its own
column so I can use the numbers in calculations.

Specify the column format as text before you import the data.
--
David Biddulph

"Michi" wrote in message
...
Hi, I'm exporting data to Excel from another software program. When the
data
is in excel, there is one column that contains numbers and colons (e.g.
10:10:80). Unfortunately for me, Excel sees this as an improper date/time
entry and gives me a decimal number instead. Is there a way in Excel to
get
the program to recognize it (10:10:80) as text rather than a general
number
or date? I will eventually use text to column to get each number in its
own
column so I can use the numbers in calculations.

Thanks David. I am using a program that creates the Excel file, and it gives
me limited options to format the data prior to exporting. Is there a
solution for resolving my problem in Excel?

"David Biddulph" wrote:

Specify the column format as text before you import the data.
--
David Biddulph

"Michi" wrote in message
...
Hi, I'm exporting data to Excel from another software program. When the
data
is in excel, there is one column that contains numbers and colons (e.g.
10:10:80). Unfortunately for me, Excel sees this as an improper date/time
entry and gives me a decimal number instead. Is there a way in Excel to
get
the program to recognize it (10:10:80) as text rather than a general
number
or date? I will eventually use text to column to get each number in its
own
column so I can use the numbers in calculations.