Home |
Search |
Today's Posts |
#1
Posted to microsoft.public.excel.worksheet.functions
|
|||
|
|||
Erratic display of concatenation
Hi All I have a puzzling issue with a worksheet I'm working on. I'm supplying catalogue numbers to a list of items by concatenating 3 three columns. Typically , this is correctly giving numbers such as 12234-12-56 13498-7-89 85787-cb-78 This is working fine for the vast majority of items but for a few , which steadfastly refuse to keep the format the concatenation demands. For example , a cell that should read 6534-12-10 is in fact reading 1692879. Others show a date , like 10/12/6541 This is only happening to about 15 cells in a list of more than 20,000. I've tried changing formats to no avail. Does anyone have any ideas why this should be happening? I'm not asking Excel to interpret anything in the cell , just to represent the concatenation accurately. Grateful for any advice. Best Wishes |
#2
Posted to microsoft.public.excel.worksheet.functions
|
|||
|
|||
Erratic display of concatenation
This is only happening to about 15 cells in a list of more than 20,000.
I've tried changing formats to no avail. Formatting does not change underlying values. And underlying values are the data evaluated by your concat formula (or any formula) My guess is a little upstream, that those "errant" data have somehow been changed by Excel into real dates in the import process. In step 3 of the Data Text to Cols import wizard, check "Text" under col data format for the 1st col involved in the concat. -- Max Singapore http://savefile.com/projects/236895 Downloads:18,400 Files:362 Subscribers:58 xdemechanik --- |
#3
Posted to microsoft.public.excel.worksheet.functions
|
|||
|
|||
Erratic display of concatenation
On Fri, 3 Oct 2008 00:18:03 +0100, Colin Hayes
wrote: Hi All I have a puzzling issue with a worksheet I'm working on. I'm supplying catalogue numbers to a list of items by concatenating 3 three columns. Typically , this is correctly giving numbers such as 12234-12-56 13498-7-89 85787-cb-78 This is working fine for the vast majority of items but for a few , which steadfastly refuse to keep the format the concatenation demands. For example , a cell that should read 6534-12-10 is in fact reading 1692879. Others show a date , like 10/12/6541 This is only happening to about 15 cells in a list of more than 20,000. I've tried changing formats to no avail. Does anyone have any ideas why this should be happening? I'm not asking Excel to interpret anything in the cell , just to represent the concatenation accurately. Grateful for any advice. Best Wishes 1692879, when formatted as a date, is, in fact, 12/10/6534 (10-Dec-6534) We need to know more about what you are doing. How are you executing the concatenation? What is the contents of the precedent cells for the values that get transformed into dates? Are these values entered as constants, or are they the results of formulas? If the latter, what are their precedents? What is the format of the cells at the time you first execute the concatenation? --ron |
#4
Posted to microsoft.public.excel.worksheet.functions
|
|||
|
|||
Erratic display of concatenation
Colin Hayes wrote...
.... 12234-12-56 13498-7-89 85787-cb-78 These should be text. This is working fine for the vast majority of items but for a few , which steadfastly refuse to keep the format the concatenation demands. For example , a cell that should read 6534-12-10 is in fact reading 1692879. Others show a date , like 10/12/6541 .... Excel is treating these as dates. Excel may even have converted them into dates. The robust, though redundant way to handle this is to assume ALL these cells have been converted to dates. So instead of =B99&C99&D99 where C99 should the catelog number, try =B99&IF(COUNT(C99),TEXT(C99,"yyyy-m-d"),C99)&D99 Use this for every record (hence the redundancy), and there should be no problems. |
Reply |
Thread Tools | Search this Thread |
Display Modes | |
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Forum | |||
Concatenation | Excel Worksheet Functions | |||
Automatic Completion Erratic | Excel Discussion (Misc queries) | |||
Erratic Workbook Password Problems | Excel Discussion (Misc queries) | |||
SUM formulas exhibiting erratic behavior | Excel Discussion (Misc queries) | |||
Erratic Cursor Behavior | Excel Discussion (Misc queries) |