Help - Banging my head against a brick wall

gaz · May 10th, 2002, 07:33 AM

I have designed a search page for our company Intranet site. Employees at the various branches can search on product codes and download them into an excel sheet. The information from the browser is downloaded in csv format. The problem is that in one of the columns some of the codes start with (02-), Excel then decides to turn this into a date. Is there any way that this option can be turned off all together. I know that if the column is formatted as a text column and the codes are pasted into that column then there ok but obviously the whole point is that they can just download the page, open it up and the information is there without any messing.

Any help would be much appreciated

Nibbles · May 10th, 2002, 07:40 AM

Hi Gaz,

As long as the cells you are importing the data into are formatted as text, Excel should not autoformat as a date.

If you do need to stop a text string from getting converted to a date i.e. "1-31", add an apostrophe ' before the string, e.g. " '1-31 ".

Hope this helps,

Nibbles

[ This Message was edited by: Nibbles on 2002-05-10 02:42 ]

[ This Message was edited by: Nibbles on 2002-05-10 02:43 ]

May 10th, 2002, 07:33 AM	#1
gaz Join Date: May 2002 Posts: 1	I have designed a search page for our company Intranet site. Employees at the various branches can search on product codes and download them into an excel sheet. The information from the browser is downloaded in csv format. The problem is that in one of the columns some of the codes start with (02-), Excel then decides to turn this into a date. Is there any way that this option can be turned off all together. I know that if the column is formatted as a text column and the codes are pasted into that column then there ok but obviously the whole point is that they can just download the page, open it up and the information is there without any messing. Any help would be much appreciated __________________ Gareth Winterton Cromwell Marketing. PO Box 14, Chartwell Drive, Wigston. Leicester. 0116 2572368 http://www.cromwell-tools.co.uk

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May 10th, 2002, 07:40 AM	#2
Nibbles Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: Surrey, United Kingdom Posts: 75	Hi Gaz, As long as the cells you are importing the data into are formatted as text, Excel should not autoformat as a date. If you do need to stop a text string from getting converted to a date i.e. "1-31", add an apostrophe ' before the string, e.g. " '1-31 ". Hope this helps, Nibbles [ This Message was edited by: Nibbles on 2002-05-10 02:42 ] [ This Message was edited by: Nibbles on 2002-05-10 02:43 ]