Hi,

I've been working with the Excel (2003) text file import wizard for a
while, but I haven't had THIS sort of problem before (that is, I had,
but so far I could always solve it).

I have a text file with tab-delimited columns. There is one header
row, and a lot of data rows. Some columns are text, and some numbers.
Looong numbers, for example 8.20124159208057

The first strange thing was that Excel believed this file originated
from Chinese (simplified) - no idea why. I converted it to unicode,
then that worked fine.

In the preview of the import wizard, all looks fine. All the numbers
are displayed as they look in a text editor. Because I feel generous,
I inform Excel that it should use the dot (.) instead of my default
comma (,) as decimal separator (as you can see in the example above,
the number uses a dot).

But once I hit "Finish" everything goes pear-shaped:
The number I mentioned before becomes 820124159208057, in fact ALL
NUMBERS lose their decimal separator!
What does work is the row and column assignment (in fact, I have
imported many files using the same format and arrangement, without any
problems).

Now I'm sitting on a load of finely minced numbers, and wonder how I
can persuade Excel to keep my decimal separation, the way, in fact, it
showed in the preview.

If anyone out there has a smart idea about this, it would be much
appreciated!

Robert