Importing CSV turns characters to exponent

**CGS Support** · 06-09-2009, 04:28 PM

Excel 2003 & 2007

Here are the contents of the text file being imported:

"Account Name","Account Type","Account Number"
"test 1","test 1","0123456789abcdefghij0123456789abcdefghij"
"test2","test2","0123456789012345678901234567890123456789"

Excel does this:

Account Name Account Type Account Number
test1 test 0123456789abcdefghij0123456789abcdefghij
test2 test2 1.23457E+38

Turn the 1.23457E+38 into a number and...
0123456789012345678901234567890123456789
becomes
123456789012345000000000000000000000000

Turn the 1.23457E+38 into and it remains 1.23457E+38

What do I have to do to get Excel to simply accept the literal value from a CSV?

pls & tks

**martindwilson** · 06-09-2009, 05:10 PM

change the .csv file extension to .txt (right click, rename)
then use excel to open it
when the wizard opens
check delimited
click next
leave "tab" checked and check "other" put a ", " in the box
click next
click the field with your number in it and then check text under "column data format" the field name will change to text
click finish

**CGS Support** · 06-10-2009, 01:14 PM

So there's no setting in Excel to simply accept literals as literals? One has to go through the import text to columns hassle?

My problem is I need Excel to read the file without converting the data automatically. Manually going through the wizard isn't a reasonable process every time this type of data is needed.

**martindwilson** · 06-11-2009, 09:27 AM

excel only handles 15 digits! as number

**CGS Support** · 06-11-2009, 09:33 AM

Thanks!

How would I build my csv to note that it's not a number? It's text.

Changing the field type to text just gets me the exponent in text, not the literal text from the csv.