Hi Joel,
Thanks for the help I found the answer in another post in this forum and
thought I would post it in mine as well so if other people are lookimg the
have more chance of getting a resolution.
The answer is:
"Hi Jim,
Actually I found what caused it ..

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/943985

this patch V1 and V2 have changed how text based .xls files are opened, it
seems to automatically run the text to columns wizard using the fixed width
option which works on the first few lines of text to work out columns .

this isnt any good as usually our "text" files are reports from another
system with headings etc that in no way line up with the columns of data .

(we get two columns in one , numbers cut in half ).If I remove the two
patches above .. V1 and V2 they open as I would expect with all data in the
first column allowing the user to manually choose columns/ delims.

I am unable to hold shift down as excel is being run/opened programatically
from another program.
Carl "

Thanks for your help
Alamb200

"Joel" wrote:

Ther must be an invisible character in the cell. Can you go into SP2 machine
remove character, save, then try opening on SP3.

Maybe there are updates that need to be installed in SP3 machines???

"Anthony" wrote:

Sorry I was pretty vague about the data, we write custom software for the
Textile market and this sits in an IBM Universe database. The report is
generated from inside the application and exported out to an Excel
Spreadsheet.

The data involved in this would be things like site visit notes and the like.

Thanks

Anthony

"Joel" wrote:

I think you are importing a Text file using data - Importing external text.
If not, then you are pasting the data into the workbook and using Text - To
- Columns. the problem would be the same in either case.

There a numous problems with the Text - to - columns method in excel.
Usually I write my own macros to open a text file and process the data. I
can supply a macro if I had more details about your imput.

A simple solution is to put your code into Notepad and get rid of the extra
Carriage return. Then put the data into excel. I often use Notepad to
filter data berfore moving text from one application to another. Notepad
will remove extraneous invisible character and give you the oportunity to
make modifications as necessary.

"Anthony" wrote:

Hi,
We currently have three laptops working at our office with Excel 2003 on
them one has sp2 and the other two have sp3.
As part of their general usage we export information from another
application to excel for ease of reading, but we have got a problem. With the
SP2 laptop this works fine and the spreadsheet is formatted as we would
expect, but on the two laptops with sp3 the formatting is different where a
cell has information in it and then an Alt+Enter instead of creating a new
line it actually does a hard return and creates a new line.
Can anyone help?
Thanks
Anthony