I posted this on the general board but nobody has an idea if there is a
solution (though I got some suggestions)

If you have a text file that is TAB delimited, you can right click it and
say open with Excel and it will open into multiple columns.

If a field needs to contain the field separator charactor you can put
quotes around the field.

Is there anyway to indicate in the text file that a field should be
interpreted as text even when it looks like numbers?

The field contains HEX addresses (ie 00241200, 00A41323) Excel interpets
the first as an integer and removes leading 0s and the second as a string.

I have tried putting quootes around them, adding a leading and/or trailing
space, putting a single quote as the first character (this works except the
quote is displayed)

I am about to the point where I will give up and train the user to alway use
the text import wizard and set the column to text. I could write them a
macro that does the right thing to open the file but that seems to be
overkill. I am hoping that there is something that can be put in the text
file that will get Excel to interpret it right. Any other idea?

TIA
Peter Richardson