Importing Numbers from a UPS program (Excel 97 on Windows NT)

[misharenu99]

There is a user here that is trying to import numbers from a UPS (yes, the parcel service) program to Excel. When he imports the numbers, they get changed and end up with an 'E' next to them. Is there a way to fix this and import the numbers cleanly?!

Thanks,

[Brooke]

There may be a way to fix the import: this isn't quite that, but it is one way to clean up the data once you've got it into excel. If the number (in cell A1) is of the style e1234 then use =0+right(a1,len(a1)-1); if it is of the style 1234e then use =0+left(a1,len(a1)-1).

HTH

Brooke

[LegareColeman]

How is the data being imported? Can you give us an example of what the imported numbers look like? Are they being displayed in scientific notation so that 1234 becomes 1.234E03?

We need a little more to go on.

[misharenu99]

The numbers are coming up in scientific notation format. We reformatted the numbers so that they come up without the "e" but now they have two additional 0s at the end of the Department Number.

Any way to remove these extra 0s? Thanks

[jfuoti]

I am having a similar problem with Excel 97. When I paste (not import from the wizard) a selection from another system with ID numbers such as 813403E7, excel changes it to 8134030000000. I do try to format the cells to text before I paste, but this doesn't always work. Does anyone have additional suggestions?

[JIMbythebay]

jfuoti,

For your case, I suggest the following:
1) Format the target cells as Text first.
2) When pasting, choose Edit (menu), Paste Special..., Text (from the list of available pasting types).

[JIMbythebay]

Meredith,

Instead of importing the labels, letting Excel try to figure out how to interpret them, then try to fix the mistakes Excel made, it is better to import them explicitly as text, since it sounds like they should be labels instead of numbers.

Are you using the import wizard? If so, when you get to step 3/3, select the column with the values in question and choose Text as the format. This will force Excel; to treat it "as-is", rather than trying to interpret what it is.